


short and sweet to the soul

by sazzafraz



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, F/M, Implied or Off-stage Rape/Non-con, PTSD, Presentation Play, Rape Aftermath
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-08-28
Updated: 2012-10-04
Packaged: 2017-11-13 02:08:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 22,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/498273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sazzafraz/pseuds/sazzafraz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are a few things being an ex-Sheriffs daughter has prepared her for, as it turns out, lycanthropy isn't one of them. (Welcome to the Veronica Mars AU)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to the Veronica Mars AU.
> 
> Some notes-
> 
> 1) The Sterek (and typing that word will never not feel dumb) is slow building.
> 
> 2) There will be frank discussions of sexual assault in a variety of manners.
> 
> 3) This will probably be a little slow to update.

\--

Saerlaith Stilinski has exactly one aim in life and that’s to get the hell out of Beacon Hills.

That sounds unkind.

Saerlaith Stilinski has exactly one aim in life and that’s to burn Beacon Hills to the ground.

Yeah, it’s not getting any better.

\--

She has Harris for Chemistry and that’s just a special kind of torture. A lot of people don’t like her and she’s done her best in the last couple of months to help that along. Mr Harris hates her with the sort of laser focused intensity you save for politicians and people who make bad TV shows. She’s late, who really cares why, Harris certainly doesn’t, and makes sure to make her stand around while he hums and huhs about her. You know, she was going to start this year off well, bring her reputation in the faculty room back from _artful rearrangement of satan_ to _just write on fucking topic already._ She’s going to be good this year. Really.

Finally she just gives up on him and says, ‘good morning sir. I didn’t bring any muffins but if you call ahead of time I’ll put on my apron just for you.’

Harris looks like he might kill her already. She smiles pleasantly and looks to her usual seat. It’s empty.

Harris smirks, ‘Mr McCall isn’t here. Ms Stilinski I’m afraid you’ll have to find someone else to conspire with.’

She smiles. ‘Maybe I’ll just listen to you instead.’

What was that about a good year?

She finds herself seated next to Jackson Whittemore and tries not to gag. Of all the over entitled assholes in all the school she had to end up sitting next to him.

The thing about Jackson is that he thinks he’s gods gift to, well, everyone, and life has yet to do the decent thing and punch him in the face. What Stiles knows about him could fill a book but the only really pertinent facts are that he’s definitely felt her up at a party and that there is a huge memory gap directly after that. Waking up on her own in the woods feeling like she’d been touched all over still remains the single worst moment of her life. She’s holding it against him.

‘Stiles.’ He says. There’s this one particular look guys give girls when they think they can get away with it. It starts at your eyes, travels down your nose and spends a lot of time at your chest and your crotch. If it was socially acceptable she’s sure he’d lean back and look at her ass. She’s gained a lot of muscle training with Scott and due to her finally getting some upper body strength she looks half a cup bigger. Huh, this must be what it feels like to not be carrying the sexual equivalent of the social plague. And all she had to was be sexually violated.

‘Asshole,’ she replies cheerfully, ‘heard you got your summer fling pregnant and Lydia dumped you. Shame.’

He reels back, guess not many people have said it to his face. ‘Why are you always such a bitch?’

He should know why, he was there after all.

‘Because life is long and you are an irredeemable scumbag.’ She pulls out her books and plops them loudly on the table.

‘It was a year ago, move on.’ He hisses, ‘and I didn’t do anything to you.’

 She wants, desperately wants, to hit him. ‘Prove it.’

His eyes flick down and he looks at her from underneath his eyelashes, ‘I can’t.’

And yeah, that’s one of the other things she knows about Jackson. 

‘I don’t have to do anything for you.’ She makes sure she’s looking him in the eyes, that he can’t mistake her meaning, ‘not anymore.’

Jackson pretends to be a person instead of an amalgamation of horrible traits with cheekbones designed to wreck you and looks away. He ignores her for the rest of the class and she pretends that the entire thing doesn’t make her want to tear her hair out.

About 30 seconds into the long slow walk from first period to second she finds herself desperately wishing for a repeat of chemistry. The thing about small towns is that everybody knows everything and nobody is willing to let go of a piece of mortifying gossip if they don’t have to. 6 months on and Stiles Stiliniski getting raped at Jacksons ‘Dead of Night’ party is still the big shocker of the party season. She tries to take solace in the fact that even if she hadn’t, her sitting in Jacksons lap in a bikini would have been and she’d still have people staring. It still feels bitter. She ducks into the girls bathroom and takes a moment to breathe. There’s a girl in there, tall, brunette, gorgeous and Stiles has never seen her before in her life. That’s near impossible for someone in their age group. The girl smiles, fixes her already perfect hair and leaves. Stiles is still staring after her a few moments later.

She looks at herself. Brunette, short hair, more freckles than is sensible, yadda yadda, once more with intense issues that she has medication for. She gets a grip, reminds herself that she has balls of steel and leaves. The staring doesn’t get better but the distance between the bathroom and her class is less.

‘Hey, you! Girl with the gender ambivalent clothing and screw you eyes, come here.’ Finstock yells.

‘Morning cupcake.’ She says.

‘Biliniski,’ his entire face scrunches up at her, ‘there’s a new girl and it is your duty to lead her around and get her used to the place. At least until she wises up and finds someone else to talk to.’

Stiles smiles a little. If nothing else she can count on Finstock to hate everyone with rabid and dedicated equality.

‘Her names Allison Argent and she’s standing by that bin. Be nice,’ he pauses and frowns, ‘nice for you.’

The girl standing by the bin is the girl from the bathroom.

Stiles walks over, ‘you’re Allison right?’

‘Yeah, um?’ She says and, right, Stiles hasn’t said a name.

‘Stiles.’

Allison smiles, and oh god, those dimples are like vortexes of hotness. ‘Really?’

‘Trust me; it’s more fun than watching everyone get my real first name wrong.’

‘Does that happen a lot?’

‘6 people have said it right on the first go. Three of them were related to me.’

‘Oh.’ Allison says, pulling out a piece of paper and handing it to Stiles. ‘So I need to get to Chemistry.’

Oh great, back we go. ‘The road to hell is right this way.’

It’s still not fun, the hallways are full of people who can’t keep their eyes to themselves, but Allison is kind and she doesn’t know who Stiles is yet.

\--   

Her dad calls at lunch. She’s busy staring down the jock club that has pointedly taken up residence at the table across from her. She’s winning by the uncomfortable looks she’s getting from Greenburg.

‘Hi dad. Hang on.’ She adjusts her conversation for irritating jocks and moves to an empty table on the other side of the cafeteria. ‘What’s up?’ 

‘Sweetheart,’ her father says gravely, ‘there’s something I need to tell you.’

‘Sure.’

‘Stiles. Scott’s missing.’

She drops her spoon and runs out of the cafeteria.

\--

Scott McCall is the only person in the entire world who didn’t change after what happened.

She’d expected him to, after all, people had seemed to throw the worst of themselves at her, but Scott had stayed slightly flaky and charming. He’d stayed constant when everything else crumpled up and burnt away. Stiles can count on one hand the things she still considers good and Scott is at the top of that list. He’d been the one to find her, had taken off his jacket and told her she’d be okay. Stayed in her room with her the first few weeks when she couldn’t walk downstairs without panicking. Stood by her when her father’s career went careening down in a show of dirty politics and money. The idea of Scott being hurt makes her sick and then it makes her very, very angry.

He went out for late night training, leaving a note by the door. His mother was working late. He went through the woods for some reason and ended up getting hit by a car. The accident was reported. By the time the deputies arrived the owners of the car that hit Scott were dead by an animal attack and Scott was gone, leaving a trail of blood and nothing else.

Stiles gets stuck on the idea of Scott bleeding.

‘I’ve got one friend, dad, only one, and if you tell me he’s lost and bleeding in the woods and don’t at least let me help look for him I’ll start screaming –you know I won’t get in the way, I’ve been out before.’

‘The Sheriff-’

She pulls down her all-weather jacket from where it hangs by the door, the one with neon piping. ‘Screw him, I’m better, you’re better, we can do it _faster._ ’

‘Stiles. We’re not going out.’

She turns on him. She will scream.

Her father looks at her eyebrows, the angry set of her shoulders and relents. ‘Not until after the officials go over the scene. I mean it.’

‘Right.’ She says.

She’ll just have to go be unofficial.

\--

The Sheriff is an idiot. Fact.

The Sheriff has left all his tape up and his markers in the woods because he thinks no one’s going to sneak onto an open murder scene at night. This is not a completely ridiculous assumption if you forget to take into account that Stiles is herself and not at all above shimmying up a tree and snapping some aerial shots. She can’t actually _do_ a ground level assessment until the scene’s declared open. The Sheriff would put her in a cell for thinking naughty thoughts let alone something as concrete as disturbing a crime scene.

The pictures take the better part of all night and she finds herself digging the woods out of her shoes at 3am. If she was a little less wired she wouldn’t have noticed at all but the papers on her table are disturbed, someone’s gone through them and the window has scratches like it’s been forced up. There are shoe tracks on the floor. Someone’s been in her room.

\--

School sucks, what else is new.

Well, Allison is new, actually, and she’s stone cold awesome. Stiles may be halfway to a terrifyingly impossible crush. Allison ditches her at lunch for _dance_ club of all things and Stiles is once again at her lonely table bemoaning the lack of Scott. She throws that off by thinking of her other major mystery.

Lydia stalks into the cafeteria and parts the popularity sea to her table. She declines company for dining and sets about picking at her salad. If anyone knows what happened it’s going to be Lydia.

Lydia doesn’t look up from her meal when Stiles sits across from her. ‘So Jackson got his booty call knocked up.’

‘Yes and I punished him for it.’ She looks up, finds her wanting, looks down again, ‘we’re not re-enacting your favourite lesbian fantasy.’

Lydia is not and never has been dumb, despite her trying to pass it off, ‘Lydia.’

Lydia sighs. ‘Let it go, Stiles. It happened and it was terrible but you do not want to know.’

Ah. ‘But you know?’

She looks naked, Lydia’s eyes dart around the room and come back to rest uneasily on her face.

‘I know something and I can’t tell you. Sorry.’

No. That’s not fair. If she knows she has to say something.

Stiles lowers her voice. ‘Lydia please.’

‘No.’ Lydia says sharply, ‘ask Danny.’

Stiles relents and lets Lydia’s obvious dismissal stick. She has to wait until Danny separates from the legion of douche to go to class. She catches waits by his locker and tries to look like she isn’t painfully lost. She likes Danny. She’d be a little hurt if he hated her. Danny turns up ten seconds before she would have left. His entire expression changes when he sees her. Lydia must have caught up to him then.

‘Danny.’ She says with somewhat genuine enthusiasm.

He looks at her and shakes his head. ‘Not here. After school. Swing by my place and we’ll talk.’

Danny leaves and she stands there for what feels like hours. There’s a buzzing noise in her ears that gets louder and louder the longer she’s there. Her mouth aches and it feels like someone has beaten her black and blue. No one will talk to her. People know and they won’t _tell_ her. Usually she’d find Scott and let his good nature flow over her. Let him tell her how strong she is and then believe it until it’s true. Scott is gone, though, and she feels like she’s covered in slime.

Someone touches her shoulder and that’s it, she’s out. She doesn’t make it to the toilet before she throws up and she thinks about leaving an apology for the janitor. Settles for leaving the school and panicking in her car. There’s a rational way to go about this and she needs to find it. She needs something to go good right now. Something she has some control over.

Which means its back to saving Scott.

\--

The cherry on a terrible day is her car breaking down halfway to Danny’s place. She texts him and apologises. He’s nice about it but that might just be practice. Popping the hood tells her she’s not getting home in it tonight.

‘Do you need a ride?’ A voice says.

Leaning out of the smoky mess that is her engine leaves her momentarily blind. When her eyesight comes back there is an incredibly attractive older man with _killer_ silver eyebrows. He’s got a nice car and a skeevy looking friend in said nice car. Stiles palms her wrench.

‘Nope.’ She replies.

‘That looks pretty unfixable. Let me give you a lift.’

‘Back off.’ There’s a wrench in her hand. She could inflict a lot of damage with it before he could physically overwhelm her. He’s not really giving off I Am Serial Killer vibes but you can’t really trust anyone.

‘The woods aren’t safe right now.’

‘I’m fine, really.’

She looks pointedly away and back to her car, noticing a figure sanding a way down the road. Staring. Right at them. Today was straight express delivery from hell, she can tell. Maybe she can get them to fight each other while she runs away.

Oh.

What a terrible idea.

‘You see the guy in the leather jacket over there?’ She indicates Captain Creepy standing all alone in the trees, ‘that’s my stalker ex. He’s a little freaky with knives. Almost tore this guys throat out over me.’

‘And you’d feel safe with him.’ Silver Eyebrows says.

‘As safe as safe can be.’

Silver Eyebrows smiles. ‘Well then. As long as you’ll be safe with him.

Silver Eyebrows leaves and Stiles breathes a little easier.

‘You probably should have taken that ride.’

Why won’t this day end?

Captain Creepy up close is sort of like the beginning of a Twilight novel. He’s hot as hell and in leather and if this many attractive men are talking to her in the same half hour the Hellmouth is wide open and they are all vampires.   

Stiles throws the wrench at him. He catches it an inch from his face and looks frankly baffled by its proximity to his face.

Okay, so, vampire is winning.

Captain Creepy moves a little bit closer and suddenly Stiles capacity to deal with all of this leaves her. She visibly deflates and asks, calmly, ‘can you just, like, fuck off. My day is terrible and I just want to go home.’

Captain Creepy inclines his head like he’s sizing her up. ‘Give me five minutes and I’ll fix your car.’

‘A serial killer who fixes their victims car before the brutal murdering. Someone call Quantico.’

Captain Creepy looks at her oddly. ‘If I was going to kill you I would have done it already.’

Right.

Serial killer.

‘Whatever. Do me a favour and do it quickly.’

‘Well,’ Captain Creepy says, ‘if you ask nicely.’

Dear god she’s trading jokes with a possible murderer. And this isn’t the worst part of her day. She sits in the drivers seat with her taser at the ready. Five minutes later Captain Creepy slams the hood down and nods at her. The car starts like a dream.

‘Is this the part where I die?’ She quips.

‘No. This is the part where you go home and stop wandering around the woods at night.’

Between one blink and the next he’s one.

\--

The Beacon is a) a shitty school newspaper and b) a well researched and filed source of personal and private information that is seriously wasted on the hyper-paranoid group of sub-par reporters that work here. Stiles should know she used to be one of them. In boxes, in cabinets and in folders sit test results, absence notes, and various detailed backgrounds on everybody who has even thought of being somebody at Beacon Hills High.

Captain Creepy is Derek Hale she figures out five minutes into The Beacon’s back issues. Turns out the Hale fire was the only really interesting bit of news to come out of the office in years that wasn’t directly related to Jackson Whittemore and that they do a ‘ –years on’ piece around the anniversary every year. One of the kids has this especially frightening and well documented hard-on for burn victim Peter Hale. If the guy was less vegetable he’d have a strong case for a restraining order. Stiles takes pictures of all the documents and puts the originals back. She takes a peek at her own file, because why not if she’s there, and boy is Mr Harris going to town on her. You catch a guy cheating on his girlfriend _once_ and suddenly you’re a problem student. In retrospect, it might be that she recorded it and had it play over loud speaker during a test.  

When she comes back out and heads for the locker room, check out Scotts stuff. Just as she's about to open the door she hears the unmistakeable sound of a locker being forced open. A healthy sense of self preservation says she should walk away. A lifetime of being the living embodiment of the cat that got hit too hard with curiosity and knows exactly what a taser to the balls can do says _go ahead, this can only go badly_.

She sneaks around the door quietly as she can and tries to see who’s in here with her. One glance at the back of a head and the leather jacket tells her it’s the same guy she was just looking at for 45 minutes.

‘You’re breathing too loudly,’ Derek Hale, Massive Creeper, Maybe Serial Killer says, ‘heard you a mile off.’

Or you’re a stalker. ‘Sorry. I missed that lesson in debutante school.’

He turns around and yeah, still hot as sin and still wearing uncomfortably tight shirts, Jesus, Hollywood is a hundred miles in the opposite direction it’s okay to wear loose shirts. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘What is the student of the high school that the legal adult is prancing around in after hours doing here on a school night watching said legal adult break into another definitely not legal at all students locker?’ she asks, hand grasping the taser behind her back. ‘I’m doing my civic duty. Your turn.’

Derek growls and stalks forward until he’s a foot from her, looming, too big to get away from, ‘you don’t get to-’

She tasers him. He falls to the ground.

‘My only friend is missing and I have a taser.’ She calmly comes to stand between his legs and points the taser right at the well defined V between them, ‘would you like to try again, sourface.’

‘Stay out of the woods.’ Derek is probably trying for intimidating but is falling somewhere between scared dog and five year old tantrum.

‘Why? So the big bad wolf won’t eat me.’

He smiles exactly like you’d expect a serial killer would, ‘good word choice.’

‘I have a taser.’

‘I’m aware.’

‘I don’t like you.’

‘Also know that.’

Talk about unhelpful. ‘Why the hell are you breaking into my best friends locker?’

‘You know him?’ Derek asks, coming up onto his elbows. Stiles tries really hard not to immediately press down on the trigger. ‘I’m not going to hurt you.’

‘Guys have said that before.’

‘Who?’ Derek looks like he’s really invested in the answer.

‘Fuck off and tell me why you are _breaking into my best friends locker._ ’

‘He went missing. I’m trying to find him. There have been some staged animal attacks in the woods and they think he might have been taken by whoever is setting them up.’ He says tersely, coming to sit up straight. Stiles has a few years of basic self defence under her belt and several years worth of training for lacrosse over the summers with Scott. She’s not an easy fight. Derek Hale is three times her size and moves like he knows what to do. She really only has one sensible option.

She says, ‘thank you for your cooperation,’ tasers him again in the balls and runs for her life out of the locker room and to her car. She might hear laughter. She doesn’t stay to check.

\--

She sets up her board at home with Scotts picture in the middle, her notes and the information from The Beacon set up around it. She rights _Derek Creepers Mysterious ‘They’_ underneath Scotts picture with a question mark.   

There are animal attacks and the department thinks there are wolves in the woods. That’s obviously bullshit; a ten second google says there are no wolves in this part of California. Derek says they’re staged but Derek is a huge unknown and also looks like a hot hobo. She’s not taking him at face value. The forensics from the car crash near Scotts last known location are definitely animalistic but not animal. The individual claw marks are too far apart. There are claw marks you can fake with some time and gloves but these look like a human with _actual_ claws did it.

She places her hand against the laminated picture and imagines having strength enough to pull through metal. Imagines it attached to her hand.

‘Oh. This is very not good.’

\--

A long time ago Stiles had a mother. She doesn’t think about it if she can help it.

Her mother was loud and vivacious and absolutely determined to let Stiles know that she loved her. Before she went to sleep and when she woke up and when she left the house _I love you_ was the first and last thing she heard. It’s been years since her mother said it but she thinks she can still feel the brush of it by her ears sometimes, against her wrists.

Her mother had a friend and her name was Uallach Hale. Her mother used to joke about making a club for women with weird names. When Stiles is five she asks why Uallach has such a weird name. Uallach smiles and says it was a name she chose for herself when the time came. Stiles doesn’t get it. Sometimes she imagines Uallach with teeth. Imagines Uallach with claws. She draws it too and hangs them around her mothers room. Her father says it’s morbid. Her mother just smiles and says _I love you._ Uallach tells her not to show the monsters she knows what they are. _Pictures are proof,_ she says.

On the day Stiles mother passes Uallach fills the room with sage and lavender and makes them tea with little bits of purple in it. Stiles sits in the room with them and drinks tea and listens as her mother’s heart monitor slowly sails downward. Uallach holds her hand as her mother goes to sleep for the last time. They do not speak. Afterwards her father arrives and screams and screams and screams until he’s started to break everyone else’s heart just as badly as his own.   

Uallach pulls her aside and says, ‘Hope is the passing place, Saerlaith.’

Stiles nods and wonders why she isn’t crying. Uallach smiles and holds her face between her palms. There’s an aching in her chest and all of her tiny 12 year old body listens when Uallach speaks.

‘Hope is the burning place, Saerlaith. Hope is the _loving_ place, Saerlaith.’

‘Hope,’ Stiles says.

‘I will not see you again. Perhaps I will never see you again.’ She places her lips on Stiles head. ‘Goodbye Saerlaith.’

‘Goodbye,’ Stiles says. _Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye._

\--

At the funeral the entire Hale family turns up. It’s a tiny ceremony with her father and her mothers family and no one else. Her father screams like he hasn’t since her mother died and throws them out. Screams until Stiles cries. Stiles looks for Uallach in the crowd. Finds only a boy with glowing blue eyes staring back.

\-- 

She fakes cramps the next day and goes searching through the woods.

Eight hours into her systematic search and the results are worrying. She’s found Scotts red hoodie which means that a) Scott took off his jumper and b) the Sheriff didn’t even bother to search that far out from. There’s general incompetence and then there’s the nagging feeling that he’s not trying at all. There’s dried blood on it, enough for a wound but not enough to kill. She leaves it where it is after taking numerous pictures. It’s best to leave evidence if she can help it.

Lights shine from a little way away and she can hear what sounds like schots. She drops to the ground and belly crawls to a tree, peeking around it and seeing-

_No way_

Derek Hale is doing some weird as hell running thing through the woods with his face looking like it came from a B-grade movie. He’s running from Silver Eyebrows, her second place creeper, who has a gun trained on him like he knows how to shoot people with it. Ten seconds later Stiles knows for a fact that Silver Eyebrows can shoot and Derek has significantly more blood outside of him then inside. The entire forest is filled with people, men with guns like Silver Eyebrow, all trained on Derek.

‘Who are you?’ A voice says from behind her and how did she miss that?

‘No one?’ she tries. ‘I’m, uh, lost?’

‘I doubt it,’ another guy says and crap it’s that guy that was with Silver Eyebrows. ‘That’s Derek’s girlfriend.’

‘I’m really not.’

‘You chose to lay with the beast,’ is all the guy says before knocking her down and zip locking her hands. Which is a little rude, Derek is an asshole but he’s not all that beastly.

They frog march her over to where Silver Eyebrows is hanging Derek upside down, hands and mouth taped. That can’t be good for bullet wounds.

‘Ms Stilinski, I’m sorry you had to see him get shot.’ He says kindly.  

Stiles rolls her eyes and sets about getting her hands out of the ziplock ties. ‘I don’t care if you shoot him.’

Silver Eyebrows frowns deeply. ‘You said he was your stalker ex.’

‘Well, if he’s my _stalker_ ex I’d actually care less not more.’

Derek makes a choked off sound against the duck tape. Hey, it’s not her fault he sucks enough to get caught.

‘Why did you lie?’

Really? Is that not obvious? ‘Because you propositioned a teenage girl by her broken down car and I’ve seen that Lifetime movie?’

‘Oh,’ Silver Eyebrows laughs, ‘no, no, I have a daughter your age. I really was just going to give you a lift but then you said you knew Derek and this McCall kid is your friend-’

So Scott is involved in this? ‘What do you know about Scott?’

‘He’s in a lot of trouble.’

‘What kind of trouble.’

‘You can’t help him now.’

 _Now?_ ‘Certainly can’t if you don’t tell me.’

Silver Eyebrows shakes his head and says, ‘let her go. Smithson, escort her back to her car. Forget about this Ms Stilinski.’

‘Sure, why not.’ Screw you a lot. She’s not forgetting a thing.

Smithson breaks away from the pack and comes to stand at her elbow. He’s got one gun and two knives. She could get the gun easily. She could also not and get _home_ easily.

The question really is; does she want to save Derek. Could she live with letting him die out here, alone, in the dark, knowing that he had a chance at a rescue and she just decided he wasn’t worth it?

Ah, shit. She’s still a remotely decent person.

Twenty metres away she hits Smithson in the stomach, pulls his gun and fires a warning shot above Silver Eyebrows head. The forest goes silent.

Silver Eyebrows says with his hands lifted placatory. ‘You’re not going to shoot us.’

‘Whoops.’ She fires another shot, this time hitting Silver Eyebrow’s shoulder. There’s a noise and a lot of blood. The gun almost shakes out of her hands. ‘Look, I need to talk to Derek and hey, those wounds are pretty terrible. He might just die.’ Her voice is even, calm, even if the gun is all but falling from her fingers with how hard she’s shaking.

‘You don’t know what you’re dealing with.’

‘Nope. Leave.’ Voice still calm, still even.

Silver Eyebrows hunches a little over his shoulder. ‘He’ll kill you.’

‘I really don’t care.’ She meets his eyes, ‘leave.’

Silver Eyebrows lifts his good arm and gestures backwards, she can make out the footfalls of at least six men, Jesus she is _so_ out gunned, and only when Silver Eyebrows climbs onto the back of a dirt bike does she turn to Derek. He’s staring at her with sick, angry eyes.

‘I’m going to get you down and then I’m going home. You can do whatever the hell you want.’

It takes her a minute to find the catch in the trap. She drops him. Makes sure he isn’t actually dead on impact and then leaves as fast as she can. She shot someone. She raised a gun and _shot someone._ Theoretically she knows everyone has it in them. Theoretically she could be driven to shoot her _father_ but she just shot someone and that’s an awful line to hurtle across when you can’t even legally drink.

Derek’s following her, stumbling ever other step. She should turn. She should help.  All she can think about is firing that gun.

‘Stilinski. Stiles. Stop. Stiles!’

She walks faster. There is no way she is dying for Derek.

‘ _Saerlaith_.’ Ser-la. Pronounced like Uallach had said it in a sage and lavender room.

It ignites something underneath her heart. Not a single person has said her given name since her mother died. It feels like she’s 12 again then it rushes forward to who she is now, how she feels now. Her bones contain lightening. Her body feels electric.

She stops and turns on pone foot. ‘Oh, cute. You know my name. Why don’t you scream it louder for the scary people with guns?’

Derek’s eyes flick all over her and it doesn’t help the feeling that she’s about to do something stupid and change all over again.

‘I need your help.’ He says quietly. His hand is bleeding black ooze from a nasty wound on his arm. ‘I need you to cut off my arm.’

She steps toward him. His arm does look horrible, ‘chop your gross stinky arm off yourself.’

‘Saerlaith-’

‘You don’t get to call me that!’ She yells.  

Derek goes very, very still and watches her carefully. ‘Help me and I won’t say it again.’

She holds out her hand and tries not to flinch back at the skin to skin contact. He’s too warm. She manages to sling his arm over her shoulders. They start walking back towards her car. ‘You know, threatening people just makes you unlikable.’

‘Saer-’ Derek starts and she’d be kind because it sounds like he can’t help it right now, he’s hurt and tired and his arm is a funky shade of blue but unfortunately for Derek Hale’s feelings she lost niceness in this forest with her stockings and underwear and when she wants something to stop it had fucking well better.

‘ _Stop saying my name_ or I will drop you and call the Dark Buffy squad myself. _’_

‘Okay.’ He says and falls unconscious.

Fuck. ‘Really? _Really?_ Right here?’

Derek gets heavier.

Time to put those months in the gym to use. She drags him a hundred metres closer before she has to give up. She sits down with Derek Hale dying in her arms and mourns a little for the person she was just about half an hour ago. It’s because of the silence and the stillness of the night that she hears it.

Crying.

 _Scott_ crying.

‘Scott!’ She screams.

‘Stiles?’ The voice is to her left, close enough that she can hear him shift on the ground. ‘Please help.’

‘Scott! I’m coming, holy shit, hang on, I’m coming.’

Scott is barely thirty metres aware, sitting naked as he was born with an equally naked woman across his lap.  

‘Laura.’ Derek whispers, apparently with the waking world again. The Hale family isn’t dead after all.

Scott is holding Laura’s body to his chest and patting her hair, trying to neaten it, she thinks, cover it up. There are cuts half way down her body. Someone was trying to rip her in half. Derek gets heavier as he slumps forward Laura. Stiles lets go and goes to her naked, terrified best friend.

‘It’s okay, you’re okay, I love you, you’re okay.’ She says what he said to her six months ago. Takes off her jacket and lays it across his legs. She brushes the dirt and flaking blood off his back and says it again. _You’re okay, I love you._

He grabs her and pulls her down until she’s pressed right up against him. He curls into her until his nose is pressed into her hair. ‘I don’t know what I did. I _don’t know._ ’ He’s crying, tiny sad noises are pouring onto her, down her neck, across her body and onto the forest floor.

She grabs his arms and just holds on. ‘Yeah, I know the feeling.’


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my god. This has gotten so much bigger than I meant it too. 
> 
> And a lot porn-ier. I don't even write porn.

One of the things people don’t tell you about rape is just what that word brings out in people.

Stiles had people egg her house, spit where she walked, had them calmly tell why it was all her fault and she should keep these things to herself. She had her name and her history and her family’s history kicked about and sifted through like it wasn’t personal, like there weren’t real people involved. She was always a little hard, before, her father was a man of the law and there are things you can’t not know or see. Some goodness gets bleed out early. After, it feels like her skin went from silk to steel to diamonds. Sometimes she’s so hard and hurt inside she can’t move. Everyday she says it wasn’t her fault and that she’s better and that she’s going to catch the fucker and hurt him until the hardness leaves. She can do that. She never had any illusions of goodness to lose.  She can stand a storm and wreck what’s left after.

She’s just not sure Scott can.

\--

With some secret superpower she’s been keeping inside her for a rainy day involving multiple bleeding maybe-mythical creatures, Stiles manages to talk them all into letting her get her Jeep and drive over here. Scott and Derek, particularly, are loathe to let her go.

‘I’m not _bleeding to death._ ’ She says as she pulls Dereks hand off her shoulder. He slumps onto the ground. Laura makes a soft calming noise.

‘We need to go.’ Laura says softly. She’s curled around Scott again pressed right against him. Derek is switching between touching her and being inconvenient for Stiles.

‘See, creeper, she obviously got the smart and pretty genes.’ Derek’s mostly a sickly shade of blue now but his hand reaches out to curl around her ankle. She nearly steps on it.

‘I _am_ pretty.’ Laura says, ‘let go Derek.’

‘Officially my favourite Hale. It’ll take me five minutes tops.’

It takes her 7 and a half minutes, she gets lost. They’re a little wild about the eyes when she flashes her lights at them. Helping them into the car takes longer than she’d like, especially when Derek starts oozing black goo on her front seat.

Derek pats along her face once, like he can't help it, before slumping back. Stiles checks his pulse, it's weak. ‘What’s happening to him?’

Laura uncurls from Scott for the exact amount of time it takes for them to get into the car. ‘We need one of the bullets they shot him with.’

‘I kept one of their guns.’

‘Do you have a lighter?’ Laura asks, hands twining back around Scott. 

‘Yeah,’ she says, ‘and gasoline.’

‘What do you need gasoline for?’ Scott asks. His voice is reedy, like he's been screaming.

‘You’d be surprised.’ Stiles answers.

‘Turn left.’ Derek says. ‘And _be quiet._ ’

Following Derek’s instructions leads to a falling down pile of wood. The Hale house is a testament to PTSD but since it’s not ruining anyone’s skyline people have chosen to forget about it rather than pull it down. Laura and Scott go in on their own while Stiles, yet again, helps Derek. The light of morning is coming over the woods, striking through the trees. Her father is away on a case, thank god. When she does manage to drag Derek into the place where, you know, everyone he ever loved died, she makes sure to not just drop him. Once Derek is settled against a load bearing wall she goes upstairs. Scott has fallen asleep in a pile of blankets in what she guesses is Derek's room. She pulls one of the blankets tighter around him and presses her head to his shoulder.

Laura is in the next room and she figures she might want the help of someone with a XX chromosome.

She steps around the giant hole in the floor and asks, ‘are you okay?’

‘I’m fine.’

Right. Because so many good things happen to girls who wake up naked and alone in the forest.

‘I don’t know exactly what happened to you but I can guess and I know,’ shit, no panicking, ‘I know what that’s like.’

Rustling of clothes. Sigh. ‘Come in.’

Stiles by some miracle manages to get into the room. Laura is brushing dirt off her body like being naked in front of a total stranger is no big thing. Are the Hales some weird magical cult?

‘It wasn’t Scott’s fault.’ Laura says, leaning down and wow, did her apparently confirmed bisexuality not need that. Laura has a wide tattoo between her shoulders, three leg-like things in a circle. ‘Can you do the back of my hair?’

‘Sure,’ Stiles says, ‘I don’t think it’s Scott’s fault.’

Stiles starts from the top and methodically works her way down. Laura leans into the touch and Stiles mostly wonders how everything lead to combing naked Laura Hale’s hair in the Hale house at dawn.

‘I’ll find whoever did this too him.’

So will she. ‘I’m done.’

‘Thank you,’ Laura turns and they are nearly the same height, ‘go down stairs.’

‘Sure?’ Stiles says, anything to make this less weird.

Downstairs she finds Derek looking three times worse than he was before, which is kind of amazing, actually.

Laura comes back in an oversized shirt and some boxers. She takes the gun from where Stiles had apparently shoved it in the back of her pants, which is some terrible gun safety she should be ashamed, takes one of the bullets, cracks Stiles lighter, pours out some purplish powder and begins packing Derek’s wound with it.  

‘I don’t think thats-’

‘Shut up.’ Derek says.

Right. He’s dying.

Laura sets it alight and after some, wow, super porn star worthy air humping, Derek sits up almost as good as new.

‘That is so cool.’ Stiles says before thinking. ‘Also. Why?’

‘Go home Stiles.’

Yeah, no, that one isn’t flying.

‘Sure. As long as Scott comes too.’

Laura’s eyes bleed red.

‘I have a taser,’ she says immediately.

Derek laughs.

Laura is taller than Stiles by a scant half inch but she tries her level best to make herself intimidating. Stiles has seen scarier. ‘Scott is safe with me. You’re exhausted. You can come back later but if I see you before noon I’m going to be displeased.’

She doesn’t want to leave him here. Not even a little. But, she thinks, there’s a solid 90 minute window in which she can get to The Beacon and find all the Hale files before she has to pretend to be awake enough to go to school.

‘Okay.’ She says brightly, ‘bye Scott see you later.’

‘Bring food!’ Scott yells.

\--

The Beacon has three boxes with Hale scribbled on the side. One of them is taped shut with a swirling pattern she recognises but can’t quite place on the top.

\--

The symbol is a triskele

Her day pretty much goes from kinda shit to outright horrible after that.

\--

A list of things you don’t want to find out your best friend has suddenly become-

1)      Engaged to the daughter of a crime lord

2)      A werewolf

3)      An accidental pornstar due to a disgruntled lover deciding on a lucrative Red Tube career

4)      A werewolf

5)      Addicted to meth

6)      A werewolf

Stiles can swing meth, porn and a rather upsettingly dull fire fight with a gang. Lycanthropy is asking for way more than she has to give. The internet is surprisingly helpful, once you get past all the really freaky porn, and wow, would she not touch that dick. She makes printouts and throws together an obnoxious little pamphlet for Scott called ‘ _your werewolf and you; looking past the porn’_. A quick debate with her lacking sense of self preservation and she prints one off for Derek too. Laura scares her a little too much for what is basically one long dick joke.

Even more helpful is the box of stunningly illegally gathered information about the Hales dating back for as long as they’ve been in Beacon Hills. There are laminated papers, photos of the family at gatherings, DVDs, a detailed list of who married whom, who had children and if she’s right, how many of those kids were afflicted with lycanthropy. She feels a little ill when she gets to the DVDs. They’re like home videos and she almost throws them away when she finds the one of Laura being born and not just because her mother believed in au natural everything. She can’t stop thinking that these people are dead. She’s watching dead people in bad lighting.

Just before it gets too much and she can’t convince herself she’s still watching for investigative purposes a recognisable face comes onto the screen. It’s a wedding and they’re all in the forest. The bride is bare footed and dancing with a very young Derek. Another woman takes Derek out of the brides’ arms and swings him around. She pauses the video when the woman’s face swings into view.

_Uallach._

And then another woman, mousy haired, smaller, lacking any of the barely contained wildness the Hales seem to revel in takes Uallach’s hand. They dance.

_Her mother?_

She ejects the DVD and puts all of the stuff back. Tapes it back up and looks at the triskele on top until the panic gets too much and she has to leave.

\--

She doesn’t sleep.

\--

Her father comes back in the evening. He caught the guy and he’s safely tucked away in a jail cell somewhere. It’s all very TV. He’s leaving again the next afternoon for a week. There’s a surprising amount of work for a private investigator. Everyone always wants to know more than they probably should.

‘How’s school.’ Her father hangs his jacket and sits down at the table.

‘Fine.’ She says cheerily.

Her father fixes a parental _look_ on her. ‘Try again.’

 Already? ‘Does Harris have you on speed dial?’

‘Yes. He’s also my most frequent text buddy.’ Stiles places dinner on the table in front of him and walks away to get her own. She can hear the exact moment he eats his so-like-meat-you-won’t-know-you’ve-been-duped.

‘This isn’t meat.’

‘We’re being healthy.’ She sits down opposite him and makes a show of eating her meal.

‘Slow death.’

‘Your heart medication would agree.’ She mutters.

Her father says nothing; the heart medication is a point of contention between them.

Six months ago David Whittemore goes missing for 12 hours. Six months ago Stiles has her drink spiked and her v-card punched without permission. Both Mr Whittemore and Stiles were in the same location, without verifiable alibis, and her father had assumed the worst. Unfortunately the Whittemore family has more pull and more reach than any other in town. It’d been hell. The court dates, going to school when she was doing her level best to get the top jocks dad thrown in jail, the definitely planted evidence that got her father kicked off the case and then the heart attack that got him kicked off the job. _Isn’t he getting old,_ they’d said. _Isn’t he getting jaded?_

Her dad moved in to PI and Stiles learnt life can suck in several new and exciting shades.

Stiles doesn’t know if Mr Whittemore did it and it doesn’t really matter. He did enough after to earn her hatred of him and his family. ‘Oh, hey, I want to borrow some of the equipment for a few weeks. Nature project.’

‘One of your films.’ He says long suffering. Her five hour documentary on how moss development affects the eco-system was not that bad. It’s not her fault the teacher had no vision and just wanted some dumb diary about her feelings.

‘I am _artistic_.’

‘Troubled, more like.’ Which kills the conversation pretty quick.

They eat in silence. Stiles turning over _lycanthropy_ in her head.

Her father drops his knife and fork on the plate. ‘I feel like we don’t talk.’

‘Dad.’

He gets up from the table and puts his dish in the sink. ‘I’ll see you in the morning.’

She listens to him walk up the stairs and tries not to let her heart weigh her down.

‘Goodnight.’ She calls out.

There is no reply.

\--

Allison does this adorable twirly thing in the hall on the way to class. ‘So. You, me, Lydia. Movies.’

‘You, me, Lydia, _what?_ ’

‘Movies.’

Stiles tries to think of a universe in which she and Lydia Martin go to the movies. It isn’t this one. ‘Why would Lydia invite me to the movies?’

‘She likes you.’ Allison says.

‘I got her fake ID pulled out of spite,’ and also spent three months systematically ruining her boyfriends life, but whatever, ‘I doubt that.’

‘She said she missed out on seeing you at Danny’s the other day and wanted to catch up.’

Ulterior motive. That she can believe. ‘Sure, movies. Just text me when you’ve got details.’

Allison pulls out her phone, presumably to text Lydia. ‘Great. Did you find your friend?’

‘How do you know about Scott?’

She waves a hand and puts the phone back in her pocket. ‘Small town, everyone talks.’

‘Isn’t that true.’ Stiles muses. ‘Yeah, I did, but you can’t tell anyone.’

Allison tilts her head to the side, like a puppy. ‘It’s a secret?’

‘Sort of.’

‘Would you like some help keeping that secret?’

Stiles just stares at her.

Allison shrugs. ‘People talk; I can safely say the worst isn’t true. And I think we’re getting to be friends?’ Allison bites her lip uncertainly.

Stiles swallows and feels some weird emotion hit her low in the gut, ‘yeah.’

‘Then let me help.’

Can she drag someone else down into this? She doesn’t think so, but then she thinks about how Scott is currently dealing with being a werewolf and how it feels to eat most of your meals by yourself and she gets stuck on just not wanting to be alone. The question isn’t one of _can_ she; it’s how _selfish_ she can be.

‘It’s not pretty.’ Stiles says, it’s actually a little disappointing to be faced with how good she isn’t.

Allison just smiles, dimples shining, ‘I’ll wear my flats then.’

So maybe there are still some people worth having around.

\--

They hit a range of stores. Food, basic first aid, clothing in a variety of sizes. Stiles pretty much just throws X-Large shirts into the trolley and hopes for the best. They got some weird looks which Stiles covers with a smile and a bad excuse about emergency plans.  People mostly just want her to keep going. When they pile the shopping into her Jeep, Allison raises an eyebrow about the camera's but lets it go when Stiles says it's for a job. Allison grills her on Scott, on her life, on how everything happened the way it did. Stiles tells her bits and pieces. She still can’t talk about huge parts of it. 

‘I wish we met before.’ Allison says and means it.

It stings, a little, ‘I talked more.’

‘And by ‘talked’ you mean ‘was less sarcastic’?’

‘Pretty much.’

They arrive at the Hale house a moment later. They pull out all of the shopping, grab a drink each and sit on the hood of the jeep. Derek comes out, shirtless, wow, unfair, and Allison makes a face at her. She mouthes _shut up_ back and calls out, ‘nice rack, sourface!’

‘Stiles.’ He grunts. His eyes flick to Allison once and then once more and suddenly this baritone of rumbling fills the air. He’s _growling._

Allison doesn’t notice. ‘Hi, I’m Allison.’

‘Last name,’ his eyes flash and he steps forward, menacingly, like Allison is something _other_ than adorable.

‘Not on the first date.’ Stiles says. She slides off the car and moves between them. Really, if Derek hasn’t learned that threatening behaviour ends in electric shocks by now, he probably never will.

‘Argent.’ Allison says, ‘Allison Argent.’

And, fuck, Derek just _loses_ it. His face changes, claws grow and he howls like he’s dying.

‘Derek, what’s wrong?’ Laura comes out.

‘Argent.’ Derek says before stomping off like a five year old.

‘Stiles. Who is that.’ Laura’s got her freaky laser vision centred on Allison, who, incidentally looks like she’s about throw up. Stiles reaches over and squeezes her hand. Allison offers a weak smile. 

‘Allison Argent.’ She sounds less sure of herself.

‘Oh.’ Laura looks as angry as Derek, no, Derek was angry and hurt. Laura looks like she’d very much like someone’s neck between her teeth. Her teeth lengthen and Allison closes her eyes. She shouldn’t have brought her here, she looks so _scared._ Laura’s features shift and shake before coming back to her resolutely human face. ‘Scott,’ she calls, ‘come down here.’

‘Whats up?’ Scott says from upstairs, then, ‘oh my god, _Stiles,_ food, Stiles!’

‘Hey man.’ Stiles keeps her voice steady and holds onto Allison’s hand even harder.

Scott joins the barely controlled werewolf party and looks at Allison with his favourite ridiculous, charming smile. ‘Hi, I’m Scott.’ He says and bounds closer to them.

Allison doesn’t smile back, ‘I’d tell you my name but it seems to be getting a pretty negative reaction.’

‘Oh? Well, don’t worry, they don’t bite or anything.’

Stiles imagines her expression is pretty comical.

‘Why don’t you and Allison bring the stuff in, Scott, while Stiles goes and talks to Derek.’ Laura says, ‘I’m going for a walk.’

Stiles raises her hand. ‘I’m not okay with that.’

‘I am,’ Allison says and jumps off the Jeep.

Scott shrugs and she can tell she loses his attention when Allison nods toward the shopping. Deserter.

Derek is brooding in the basement doing push ups. If Stiles was less pissed and confused she might go for some male objectification.  Derek looks up once and goes back to passive aggressively working out.

‘Come on, kitten.’ Stiles says. ‘Use your words.’

‘We’re you like this?’ Derek doesn’t even pause. ‘Before.’

No. She wasn’t. But thinking about before is useless and she’s not going to make herself tired and upset doing it.

‘What would you know about before?’ She says meanly.

‘I know there’s an after,’ Derek stands up, ‘and the after usually comes because someone did something you didn’t want.’

What was _he_ like before, she thinks suddenly; quiet, loud, none of it? Her childhood was pulled out of her when she was 12, when she was 16, when her father came home with a bullet wound. Derek’s was burnt but there’s some of it still, around his eyes, in the way he reacted to Allison. That’s not a man reacting, no, that’s a scared child. Stiles has been scared all the way down to her bones. Lost and opened up unwillingly, like some sort of sacrifice. Derek is the same in the line of his shoulders. They look at each other and she can feel a change coming over again, like the first time when he’d called her by name. A moment of mutual vulnerability. 

Stiles has her people, though, and Derek isn’t on the list. She shuts down the small part of her that starts reaching out. ‘Leave Allison out of this, she’s a good person. She’s just helping me.’

Derek looks confused, angry, sad and angry again. ‘You’re not that dumb.’

‘You haven’t even known me for a week.’

‘You’re simple.’

She has a brief perfect moment of hatred for him, that he could so easily reduce her in so few words.

‘Fuck you,’ she says with actual heat behind it.

Derek grinds his teeth and she imagine he desperately wants to stomp his foot. ‘You’re with us now.’ There’s a very implied _not them_ on the end.

‘This is not a paranormal romance novel and you don’t thrill me.’

‘She’s an _Argent._ ’

‘What does that have to do with anything!’ She yells.

‘I don’t know, Stiles,’ Derek snarls, ‘maybe that they killed my entire family.’

\--

Laura talks. She tells the story from medieval France through the revolution through the 21st century and ends it with how they ended up in New York. She talks about the Hunters and their families and how it works. She says that other things exist too. Mostly she concentrates on the Argents and the Hales and how they nearly killed each other.

Allison starts shaking when they get to the part about her father.

Allison could shut out the accusations against her aunt. What her father does. But Stiles picks her father out in a picture and the gun is definitely one of the ones from her father’s collection. It makes the rest of it –the fire, werewolves, hunters- impossible to shut out completely. By a stroke of luck, no one mentions that Stiles shot him but Allison still can’t look her in the eye. Stiles ends up letting Scott take Allison back to Stiles place for the night. They, at least, seem to get along really well. Stiles ends up putting things away in a small fridge plugged into a generator and waiting for Scott to come back and pick her up. Laura thinks they need to talk.

Laura comes to stand in front of her. She says, ‘you fucked up.’

‘Evidently.’

‘Stiles.’ Laura’s mouth changes and her eyes slip between colours, ‘you _really fucked up._ ’

‘She offered to help me bring all the stuff out here. I accepted. I didn’t know and who cares, anyway, she has nothing to do with it.’ She says distantly. Allison is good.

‘She’s an Argent and you brought her here.’

Stiles doesn’t reply. History is bloody, she knows that, but this blood has a name and she can’t help but be a little hurt by the idea of that much death. It's not Allison's fault just as it isn't Laura's but it's just so messy and tangled. She doesn't know how they can stand it. Stand thinking about killing each other pretty much _just because_ for centuries. 

‘You need to run things by me.’ Laura says. ‘With us, Stiles, come on, just say yes.’

She almost says _not your pack._ She’s not. She’s here for Scott and Scott only.  But the way Laura’s looking at her, god, it’s terrifying. She’s only just starting to realise that these are werewolves and there’s a reason they’re allegories for cannibalism. Laura smiles with all her teeth.

‘Sure.’ _No._

‘First thing about werewolves,’ Laura says teeth getting longer, eyes getting meaner, ‘can’t lie to ‘em.’

‘I’m not lying,’ she tries to make her body fake a _yes._ Steady heartbeat, lazy eye contact, fake it till she makes it.

Laura steps even closer, do werewolves not have any sense of personal space? ‘That’s not going to cut it.’

Laura pushes her neatly and calmly against the wall, boxing her in with sheer presence. Stiles is so far out of her depth she can’t even see the shore. ‘I-’

‘Hush.’ Laura leans forward and tucks herself around Stiles. It’s- it’s too close, is what it is. Werewolves _definitely_ have an entirely different set of social codes. ‘I’m thinking.’

They stand there long enough for Stiles to uncoil. Laura makes a low pleased humming noise and leans back. She places her hands lightly on either side of Stiles face. ‘You don’t trust me yet,’ she says, ‘I can change that.’  

She doesn’t bother saying no. ‘Sure.’

‘You’re still lying.’ Laura says disappointedly, ‘thank you for bringing the shopping. and the cameras. It'll be nice to have the security. Please come back.’

‘Right.’

Laura smakes a deep noise in her throat, clenches her jaw, leaves.

Stiles finishes packing the food, leaving the house as quietly as possible. She ends up sitting out the front alone, watching the moon eat the forest eat the sky.

\--

Allison is asleep on her couch when Scott finally gets her home. Scott gives her this terribly sad look before leaving, saying he'll be back for breakfast but he really, really needs to see his mom. Stiles gets that and says she doesn't expect him in the morning. She covers Allison with a blanket, makes some tea and goes up to her room.

Pouring over the files in the Hale boxes again provides nothing at all in the way of explaining weird werewolf behaviour. There is no _Etiquette for Werewolves_ she can quick consult to get out of this whole _pack_ business. What looking again does provide is a clearer and more horrifying picture of Beacon Hills. More accurately, how involved werewolves were with the town.

The Hale’s owned land, businesses, they’ve even been mayor a couple of times. In fact the position they seem to occupy most is Sherriff. That makes sense actually because for as many Hales that have turned into upstanding citizens who only do disreputable things once a month there are the ones who have a delinquency record longer than her arm. She keeps looking for mentions of others, the Argents, whoever started keeping these records in the first place. There's not a trace of them anywhere. Somewhere in hour five she realises that finding whoever made this is far, far more important than just about anything else.

See, there’s thorough and then there’s _thorough_ and the longer she looks at the boxes the more obvious it becomes that whoever put this all together is seriously obsessed. She can see faint marks on the laminated pages where someone has written down and written and erased until the page is stained lightly grey. The photos are ragged at the edges and, well, whoever did this has figured out who every werewolf in Beacon Hills is. Having met the last of the Hales Stiles can bet that it isn’t exactly easy information to get. Someone has, though, and they have easy access to The Beacon. For the safety of herself and everyone she cares about she’s going to have to bug the ever loving hell out of it.

Another problem reveals itself. Peter Hale was 27 when the fire happened, burned alive and in a vegetable state, just alive enough that no one can say _euthanasia._ But when Stiles holds a family picture from about the time of the fire up to a creepy shot she found in his file of Peter taken sometime in the early morning less than a month ago, he looks exactly the same. It’s been six years and no plastic surgery. He can’t still look 27. In fact, whoever this is has been taking pictures regularly the entire _six years_ Peter has been sitting in that room. It starts three months after the fire, escalates to once a month and now once a week. Set the photos out in a line not only does Peter get significantly better he heals at a rate that Google reveals to be near impossible. She scans the pictures into the her computer and brings up photoshop. The change is gradual but definite. He doesn’t lose muscle mass. He doesn’t gain any new wrinkles. He just _heals._ She might be able to dismiss it but another photo from about four months ago shows a _flash_ coming from his eyes.

His eyes are open.

Stiles looks for the most recent one, taken at night, and finds the time stamp. It was taken three days ago. The pictures are taken at a range of times, which probably means an opportunistic photographer or someone with irregular rounds. She’d bet on the latter. The hospital is not that badly guarded. The regularity of the photo’s also means she has to get the boxes back into The Beacon in the next four days or whoever has been so kindly creeping on the family of creepers is going to know something’s up. Her one ray of moderately shiny lining -if Peter opened his eyes he probably knows who’s been snapping shots. She just needs to get to him and get him to talk. 

She looks at Peter Hale’s smiling, calm face and feels a little ill. She’s got a few months of the PI business under her and an entire lifetime of watching her dad at work, couple that with a brief interest in psychology and you can plot out a pretty horrible picture. Peter has been sitting by himself in a room. He hasn’t talked or touched another person since he watched his whole family _burn to death._ Statistics are pretty sure it’s Peter who hurt Scott and Laura. A basic understanding of human nature says that whatever is left of Peter at this point is more dangerous than she’s comfortable thinking about.

\--

As Scott tells it over breakfast, Laura is his Alpha.

She bit him to save his life when it looked like the injuries he suffered from the car were too severe. Scott thinks it might have been loneliness too, he says he can feel something in his head, like Laura is always checking up on him. Stiles must make a face because he rushes over it, _Laura can’t not,_ he says, _it hurts to be alone._ Scott’s the one that sounds hurt and she wishes she knew how to comfort him.

‘You have me.’ She says.

‘I always will.’ He promises. 

After she turned him they were attacked and, this is the part Scott’s not sure about, something hurt Laura. He thinks it was him but he doesn’t really know, the thought of hurting Laura now makes him so ill he dry heaves over the sink for a minute but he says in the moment he just wanted to rip her to shreds. Scott is worried about having hurt Laura. Stiles is worried about Scott being used against his will.

School is only mildly like the fourth circle of hell with Scott back. Two days pass before Stiles has a chance to return the files –after making numerous copies, of course, and it’s another day before she can bug the place. Scott and Allison have taken up a sickeningly loving affair. They coo and dance and kiss in the hallway and Stiles is torn between happiness and ginger ale. She hasn’t had a chance to talk to Allison about her family yet, she will, she has to. No one deserves to have their world shake and quiver that much just to go through it alone. Allison and Scott are possibly the only friends she will ever make and all she really has to offer is a shoulder and a deep appreciation for disproportionate retribution.

‘Guess what I did today.’ Scott says at lunch.

She raises an eyebrow. ‘Bought me a pony?’

‘No,’ Scott says like it might still happen anyway, bless his heart, ‘made co-captain!’

‘Of the lacrosse team.’ She says flatly.

‘No, debating.’ He rolls his eyes, ‘I’m not on another team Stiles.’

‘Yeah, but, lacrosse, with _Jackson._ ’

‘Oh,’ Scott says, ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t think of that.’

She’s not upset that he got captaincy, of course not, he loves lacrosse like most people love good pizza, but that means-

‘McCall, Stilinski.’ Jackson says as he plops his tray down next to her. ‘We’ll be sitting here from now on.’

‘I really can’t see why.’ Stiles says. The entire ‘popular’ table falls on top of them and any hope of slowly fading into obscurity disappears. Danny sits down next to Scott and gives her an apologetic little shrug. Stiles has the urge to reach across the table and stab him with a fork. She was counting on Danny to be a decent person.

‘Status quo, not that _you_ would know.’ Jackson makes a quick dismissive once over.

No, guess not.

She grinds her teeth. ‘Can’t you establish the slow demise of humanity somewhere else?’

‘Not when I can do it right here next to you.’ Jackson bites into his apple and on any other girl that seductive stare might have worked. It just makes Stiles angrier.

‘Scott, I love you,’ she ignores the mocking _aw_ that generates from Jackson, ‘but it would be accurate enough for a trial to say that if I brutally murder Jackson in the next minute it was pre-meditated. This face wasn’t made for jail so I’ll see you later.’

Scott looks up from talking to Danny and shoves in. ‘Uh, that thing! With that person! You have to talk to them.’

Thing?

‘What-?’ Oh, shit, werewolves, how did she forget that? ‘Yeah. I’ll get around to it.’

Scott turns back to Danny and in turning away she meets Jackson’s eyes. Jackson looks at Scott and then significantly back at her. She raises an eyebrow, curtsies, leaves.

She can practically hear the cogs turning in Jacksons mind.

\--

There are 22 messages from Laura and Derek on her phone when she gets home. She listens to one, hears Laura checking up on her and then deletes all of them.

They’re not the family member she wants to talk to.

\--

It’s late at night and she probably shouldn’t be here. The hospital has the same stale, ingrained death smell that it’s always had. From when she was a grieving daughter to when she broke her arm two years ago. She walks past everyone to get to the long term area. They don’t stop her. They don’t even look up. Small towns, man, guess they’re good for something.

She’s expecting Peter to be staring at the wall, at least pretending to be unconscious. So she flicks on the lights and spends a second rummaging through her bag. She pulls out her phone -three more messages from Derek and Laura- her notepad and her ipod. She puts everything but the phone back. It takes her a minute but when she’s reorganised she looks up to flashing blue eyes. Peter Hale, lucid, fully dressed and, seriously, _cliché_ , sipping a cup of coffee as he looks her over, once, twice, eyes getting more intense each time.

‘You must be Stiles.’ 

\---

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here is the first [third](http://www.mediafire.com/file/qelofg3nq5y2vmv/come_on_now.zip) of a ridiculously long playlist.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A in-chapter trigger warning for vague but probably triggery for some descriptions of off stage rape.

‘You must be Stiles.’ Peter says and holds out a hand in invitation. When she doesn’t move to take it he smiles all the way to his eyes. If there was ever a time for divine intervention, well, actually, it should have been before now but it’d still be a kindness.  

She smiles back with as much teeth as she can, ‘and you’re Peter. Sorry we can’t chat.’

‘Of course we can.’ He stands and walks toward her. She steps back and he stops. ‘I’m not interested in hurting you.’

She rolls her eyes, ‘is that thing with the men in your family? Being threatening but then saying it’s all okay because you don’t mean it.’

‘I should hope not,’ he smiles again, wide and inviting, ‘my sister definitely would be disappointed. She was the Alpha before Laura.’

Ah, so Peter is charming as well as psychotic. Fortunately for her charm only works if you’re inclined to trust. ‘Before your coup?’

‘Oh,’ he says, pleased and genuinely surprised, ‘intelligent. I like that.’

‘I’m really not interested in anything you have thought or will think about me.’

He moves a little bit closer now, all the way from personal to intimate. She doesn’t move away even when he’s close enough to smell, earth and blood and stale soft inhumanity, like he’s dead already.

‘Why are you here, then?’ He’s got a loose grip on her wrist, long, long fingers, brings it up to touch his lips. ‘For Laura and Derek? They seem to have been very heavy handed on you.’

‘No, not even a little bit.’ She says candidly. ‘Someone’s been taking photos of you for the last six years. I need to know who it was.’

He tilts his head and presses a tiny kiss to the inside of her wrist, she tries to pull her wrist back but his fingers just tighten. ‘Why would I know?’

‘You opened your eyes in one of the pictures. I think we both know you’re not the type of man to let that opportunity go.’

‘Flattery. I had thought I’d stop being receptive to that.’

Let’s hope not.

‘Why would I just tell you?’

‘Random bout of civic mindedness.’ She swallows her revulsion before adding, coyly, ‘come on, I promise I won’t tell anyone.’

Peter goes very, very still. There is the faint sound of growling. ‘You shouldn’t give me an opening like that. I might take it.’

Her teeth grind together. He’s doesn’t get to put his hands on her and not even do her the decency of playing along. He’s not dumb and neither is she. ‘Look, I’m going to find this guy and you can help me or you can not but you look like the kinda guy who goes in for vengeance.’ And hopefully vanity, ‘I’m offering to help you get it for the guy who has several dozen embarrassingly amateur shots of you in a hospital gown.’

His eyes flash with something like pride and he drops her wrist. ‘Good girls don’t go around talking about vengeance.’

‘I’m not good.’

‘Evidently,’ he steps out of her space, ‘brunette, older male, glasses. Humans all look the same to me I’m afraid. You have dreadful taste and you tend to smell just as bad.’

‘Thanks.’

 Peter just keeps on smiling. ‘Sally. Detain Ms Stilinski. I would rather nothing happen to her immediately.’

First she thinks _who the hell is Sally?_ But then thin fingers grip her shoulder and she’s turning her head to look into the flat eyes of a woman in a nurses uniform. Sally is apparently how Peter’s been faking it all these years. Sally smiles just as creepily and just as dead as Peter. She throws the phone at Peter and swings around to punch Sally in the face. Her fist hits with a satisfying crack. She runs as Peter roars and reaches out to grab her. She skates around the corner she can see the tiny red lever of the fire alarm like a beacon. A second later a dark blur yells something like her name and she see’s Derek rushing toward her. She reaches out for him on instinct and when he reaches back she changes direction and body slams him into the wall. Derek folds around her and slides them both to the floor.

‘What the hell?’

‘Fire alarm!’ She says as she reaches up to pull it. Derek follows her up the wall a second later, bodies still too close. ‘We need to be gone before anyone from the Sheriffs department gets here.’

‘Stiles,’ Derek says, ‘why are you running from my uncles’ room.’

‘Because statistically speaking your uncle being the only person around who knows about werewolves makes him suspect number _only_ for what happened to Laura and Scott.’ She pauses and tries to detangle herself from him. ‘Then, you know, he turned out to be a somewhat charming person with serial killing potential. Is it a thing with your family? Great cheekbones and broken moral compasses?’

‘Stiles,’ he says again and if we have a scale from one to ten with one being unspeakably tacky and ten being whatever was cool before sliced bread, how obnoxious is it for her to buy Derek a dry erase board so he can put little emoticons on it. He might actually get all the way through expressing an emotion.

‘What is wrong with you? we have to leave.’

‘Peter tried to kill Laura?’ He looks stricken.

Oh

Her mouth opens and closes, working for words she can’t really think of. Derek’s face hurtles through feelings in the corners of his features. Lips and eyes and the slight falling of his eyebrows. He pulls it back together and grabs her elbow. ‘We’re leaving.’

She’s about to say hell yes but then remembers Peter has her phone. Which she threw at him. When he tried to _keep_ her. Shit. ‘Uh, no. Peter’s got my phone.’

‘Peter.’

She winces. ‘We’re on a first name basis now. The team that plots together and all.’

‘He tried to kill Laura.’

‘And that’s terrible,’ she tries to twist out of his hold, he simply changes postions so she can't, ‘but my priorities are different, okay, this pack thing might be the be all and end all for you but it has _nothing to do with me_.’

‘Scott’s ours.’ He saysobstinately. 

‘Scott’s mine and I’m letting you borrow him.’

‘You really think that.’

‘I’ve been reliably informed I can’t lie to you. That’s my stance and I’m sticking to it.’

Derek’s body language shifts and suddenly he’s- he’s moved his hand down to her wrist, like Peter, and what the hell did these kids _drink_ growing up? ‘You can’t avoid us. Why not make it as easy as possible.’

She yanks her wrist out of his hold and puts space between them. Derek moves forward again and manages to grab both her wrists in one hand. ‘Your entire family sucks at seduction hardcore. Stick to manscaping.’

Derek’s face says he has no idea what that is.

‘Derek, she obviously wants you to let her go.’ And there’s Peter, standing in the middle of the hallway as the emptying hospital gains traction. Does Peter wait for dramatic entrances? Derek snarls, teeth lengthening and jaw cracking. He looks at her once, gauging reaction, she’s not scared. He lets her wrists go, thumb dragging across them as he does, and gives her one look of, what, betrayal?  

‘Thanks,’ she pushes against Derek until he backs off. ‘I want my phone.’

‘Of course,’ he leans faux casual against the wall, ‘the team that plots, after all.’

Derek steps between her and Peter immediately. Peters eyes flash, a duller gold then Scott’s, like amber with dirt covering it. Huh.

‘You know I think there’s an examination room a little way down the hall, if you hurry you can whip ‘em out, measure ‘em and know who’s alpha douchebag for sure.’ She says, already one handily looking for her taser.

Derek rolls his eyes, ‘Stiles.’

‘Sourwolf.’

Peter looks charmed. ‘This is fascinating.’

‘Shut up.’ They say at the same time.  

Peter drops a patronising bow. ‘I’ll leave you two alone then. I have other things to do tonight. Family dinner, Derek.’

‘Stiles,’ Derek says without looking at her, eyes trained on Peter’s retreating back. ‘Scott trusts us, why can’t you?’

‘Would you like your list chronologically or by how much it hurt?’ Her voice cracks on how and seriously, screw this; she has no time and no need to make herself look human to Derek fucking Hale.

His eyes look like he gets it and she really, really doesn’t want him too. ‘I’m not here to hurt you.’

‘Just take me home.’ She says, deliberately turning away. He sighs, heavily, and she keeps her chin up.

\--

Derek has a weird definition of home.

‘I don’t live here.’

‘You never said whose home.’

The Hale house still looks terrible but there are building materials and obvious signs of recent activity. There’s no sign of life from inside the house.

‘This is you being smart isn’t it?’ She gets out of the car and makes sure to slam the door. ‘Every time you have an idea run it by someone else first.’

She goes up the recently renovated stairs, footsteps creaking obviously, into the newly sanded hallways until she comes to an open door. Laura is lying in a nest of pillows, holding open a book Stiles can bet she’s not reading.

She throws her hands up. ‘Why is your brother so weird about me?’

Laura marks the page, puts down her book and turns to fully face Stiles. ‘Oh. We’ve adopted you. Derek’s always been somewhat possessive when it came to our family.’

‘I’m going to assume that has some special werewolf meaning I’d like to be blissfully unaware of.’

‘Stiles. Whatever you think this is, it’s not.’ Laura’s voice hollows out into something almost desperate. ‘Our family is dead. We watched them burn to death. We watched them scream as their skin burned and healed until it couldn’t anymore. We watched them scream for the human children who couldn’t do that yet. They burnt and we could only watch.’

And, Christ, she is just the worst with this today.

‘I-’ she starts and stops. How do you say I’m sorry everything’s shit for you and I keep bringing it up in a way that isn’t massively horrible?

‘No. Listen.’ Laura stands and looks at her with actual anger. ‘You helped us and no one has done that in years. You’re _ours_ and I can’t ask Derek to let that go too. _I_ can’t let go. So you are stuck with us and we’re stuck with you.’

It sounds half like a threat and half like a promise. For one second she really desperately wants it, and she guesses Laura can hear it or smell because she smiles like she’s won something. Stiles thinks of her anger, of making a deal with the werewolf devil even though he’s the one who hurt Scott. _Her_ Scott, no matter what they say. There are places she’ll go to get what she wants, terrible prices she’d pay after months and months and months of being dehumanised and victimised. The Stiles of six months ago would have jumped at the chance to have this. When the smile on Laura’s face turns to confusion, Stiles says, ‘I’m really not onboard with being the staring attraction in a bad urban fantasy novel.’

Laura snaps her teeth, ‘tough.’

Laura surges forward and does that thing where she traps you in a small place and then plasters herself all over. Stiles has never had so much boob on boob action in her entire life, imagined or otherwise.

‘What’s with the touching?’

Laura laughs. ‘We’re hugging.’

‘I noticed.’

‘Bonding. We’re bonding.’ Laura tugs her closer and seems all their interactions are destined to end with _cuddling._

‘Why?’ Stiles says desperately.

‘Werewolves are naturally tactile.’

‘Yeah, okay, but why are you touching _me?_ ’

Laura laughs again and steps back, ‘Stiles. You seem smart.’

‘Yes?’ Second werewolf today.

‘So stop playing stupid.’

\--

There’s a surprise in her locker. A soft plush wolf toy.

Scott didn’t give it to her and while it’s the kind of mindfuck she’s sure Peter would enjoy she doubts he’d risk new found freedom by walking into a school with security cameras. There’s a note with it blue paper with symbols impressed in small green font. She puts the note and the wolf back in her locker and closes the door firmly on it. She doesn’t need more mysteries.

School is school is terrible and lunch is just as unforgiving. The popular crowd is still milling around them with false compliments. Stiles is gritting her teeth and trying not to mention that time that everyone here called her a liar and her father worse. Lydia stops by for all of the ten seconds it takes to give Stiles a demanding look. For lack of better options Stiles follows after her.

Lydia leads her all the way out into the carpark and to what is definitely her boyfriends’ car. She looks around, whispers _Geronimo_ to herself and slides into the dark, expensive back seat of Jackson Whittemores’ Porsche. Danny and Lydia are waiting.    

‘We want you to do something for us and then we’ll tell you what we know.’ Lydia says immediately.

Stiles nearly gets out right then and there. ‘You have got to be kidding me.’

It’s the stark and naked desperation in Lydia’s eyes that keep her there. ‘Harris has got something of mine and I need it back.’

Stiles sighs and rolls her eyes. ‘What has he got?’

Lydia bites her lip nervously. ‘It’s personal. A small green diary.’

Stiles blinks. ‘You keep a diary?’

Danny smiles, all dimples. ‘Don’t you?’

‘Diary. Where?’ Stiles rolls her eyes even _harder._

‘How would we know?’ She says snidely, all weakness gone from her face.

‘Lydia,’ Danny admonishes before turning back to Stiles, ‘in his car or in his house. I already know it’s not in the classroom.’

‘Look at you, breaking the rules. You’re almost a real boy.’

‘Which one of us is on the FBI’s watch list?’

She raises an eyebrow at him. ‘Small green diary possibly containing the secrets to the universe. That it?’

Danny looks to Lydia who says. ‘Yes.’ And then jumps out of the car. Danny shrugs his shoulders and gestures for her to leave.

She makes Allison go with her to The Beacon after school, pulls out Harris’ file and finds a picture of his car.

‘So?’Allison says, looking around with barely concealed curiosity. ‘what’s this?’

‘Welcome to The Beacon.’ She puts the file back and finds the box full of equipment the reporters use to get some of their more disreputable information.

‘And what am I doing here.’

Stiles puts the hanger into her bag. ‘You’re plausible deniability.’

The plan involves Allison distracting Harris enough for Stiles to set up some unstable chemicals in the lab, sneak out, break into his car and find what she’s looking for. The plan doesn’t have to involve chemicals but it fits and she’d like to ruin his day just a bit more. The car door pops open just as Allison texts her the all clear. Stiles really, really lucked out on showing her around.

There are only a few places to keep something like a book in a car and she starts with the obvious one. The glove compartment yields some very sick things about his sex life and a few very sharp knives but no green diary. There’s nothing under the chairs or jammed down the back seat. She sits there for a moment, eyes gazing over the car until she notices a weird bump in the top of one of the head rests. She takes a small, creepy knife and starts ripping apart the seams of the headrest. It becomes immediately obvious that it’s been resewn multiple times. She rips open the stitches and finds a little green book and a curl of dark hair. She makes the headrest looks as intact as possible before she gets out of the car and as far away from the scene of the crime as possible.

A text to Allison to give her the all clear and another to Lydia to tell her she has the book and they should meet at her Jeep. On a whim she opens the diary, never can know too much about people. There are hand drawn images of women with numbers and dates and weird red smudges. It’s creepy as all hell and only gets creepier when the pictures switch from hand drawn to actual photos. Immediately after she realizes what she’s reading she texts Lydia back citing family problems and goes home to look at this in greater detail.

The diary has pictures of her, of Lydia, of girls she doesn’t know at all. There are lines and shapes written all over it, looping cursive and sharp joins. Paragraphs in the margins about things they shouldn’t know about at all. When they last had a period and who they’ve slept with. Stiles doesn’t look at that part of her own page. She pulls apart the book and looks at individual pages; there is no way in hell Harris is getting this book back. Stuck up along her wall the pages are a timeline from decade to decade, girl to woman to daughter to mother and back again. There are categories made by the colour of the ink scribbled across the pages, across the girls faces. Green for people who’ve moved to Beacon Hills recently. Red for long established families. Blue for the Hales. Yellow for her, Lydia and three girls she doesn’t recognise.

_What the hell is this?_

\--

Peter Hale turns up just as she’s contemplating desert. He looks like someone attacked him with a screwdriver. His clothes are rumpled and he looks significantly less polished then last time. She makes herself a cup of tea while he obviously waits for her undivided attention. Boy does he like an entrance. She sits down at the dining table and makes a polite _go on_ gesture with her hand. Peter makes a noise that’s three quarters of a way to a hiss.

She takes a sip of her too hot tea to cover the smile. ‘What, the family wasn’t happy to see you? I am shocked, _shocked_ I say.’

He grimaces. ‘Your wit is unappreciated.’

‘I’d offer some pain killers but your grimace of pain warms my heart.’

Peter dramatically rolls his eyes and walks around her dining room. His hands drifty along her family mementos, stopping to lightly trace the edge of a family portrait from when her mother was still alive.

‘Your mother was lovely.’ He says, quietly, like he knew her. Like he knew her the way Stiles did. It raises something ugly in her throat and she forces it down as violently as possible. She’s known since he said _‘you must be’_ that she needs to stay focused around him. That if she stops playing three moves ahead of him he’ll have tipped over the board and her blood will be smeared on his mouth before she can scream _no_. There might be a few scraps of a person left in Peter but she’s not going to be the one to go looking for them. She’ll play him like a monster, he’ll rise to the occasion, and hopefully she’ll come out of it alive.  

‘Talk about her again and I’ll skin you.’

‘Noted,’ he puts down the photo and plays at being harmless, ‘so, revenge?’

Stiles rubs her eyes tiredly. ‘There are a surprising amount of men older than me who are dark haired and wear glasses.’

Peter takes off his coat, lays it over a chair, and begins examining himself in the glass of another photo. ‘He had a very distinctive smell.’

‘Sure. I’ll just turn into a werewolf and sort that right out.’

He pauses again and if he thinks she can’t see this for the conditioning it is then they are really just wasting their time here. She raises an eyebrow and Peter shrugs a little, _no harm, no foul._ ‘You want it don’t you?’ he says casually, ‘you want the bite.’

She wants to never be defenceless. She wants to be strong without trying. She wants to never have anything taken from her again. That it all coincides with being a werewolf is neither here or there.

‘I don’t want it.’

‘Lie.’ Peter says with a lilt on the end, ‘but I’ll let you have it.’

She rolls her eyes, ‘that’s very kind of you.’

‘No, not really.’

‘You can leave.’

‘Why would I?’ he does pull on his coat, though, lingers near the doorway, ‘Deaton.’

Deaton as in the _veterinarian_? ‘What?’

‘When I said distinct smell, I meant _distinct._ I don’t know why you haven’t seen him already.’

She gives into genuine frustration. ‘What does the vet have to do with it?’

He shakes his head. ‘Does anyone ever tell you anything?’

‘Never as much as I’d like.’

‘We could give you what you want.’ Here we go. Final push.

All the lore she’s got says that werewolves are instinctual creatures; they react to body language more than they ever do to words. She raises her shoulders and makes herself into a picture perfect show of dominance. ‘I can get it myself, thanks.’

‘No,’ he shakes his head, ‘you don’t want that.’

Be aggressive, ‘I’ll thank you to not think of my wants.’

‘ _Thank_ me.’ He smiles, wild and feral and affectionate for all that it’s made of teeth, ‘you are so much _fun._ ’

He leaves, the night air blowing in cold through the open door. She doesn’t think about what Peter said. He’s a predator and that way lays madness. She doesn’t think about the secrets Lydia and Danny are holding over her and she doesn’t think about how Beacon Hills was founded by monsters and she doesn’t think about Laura and Derek fucking Hale sitting in their dead house and she doesn’t think about how empty her own house is.  

\--

Lydia finds her before school, heels clacking against the floor.

‘I found it.’ Stiles says instead of hello, ‘you’re not getting it back.’

Lydia swallows obviously and darts her eyes around. Stiles can’t tell if it’s the social embarrassment of talking to her or if it’s the utter creepiness of what’s in that diary. ‘You saw?’

Stiles nods. ‘How did you know?’

‘I was staying back after class,’ she flips her hair to one side and starts toying with an end, ‘chemistry is a talent of mine and I wanted to get his permission to do some extracurricular work, make sure it went on my file.’

‘And?’

‘And I cut my hand on a piece of glass. He left to get some bandaids and the book was on his desk. I was curious and it had the alchemic symbol for Jupiter on it.’

‘The squiggle?’

Lydia rolls her eyes. ‘Yeah, the squiggle. So I looked through it. Kind of a shock.’

‘Kind of,’ she agrees, ‘I’m guessing you think it has something to do with what happened to me?’

Lydia snorts. ‘Guessing? Stiles, the guy has your menstrual cycle mapped out. I don’t think you were the first. At the back there’s a list of names crossed off, all of them but yours crossed off.’

Stiles eyebrows furrow. ‘I didn’t see a list of names.’

‘It’s in a weird combination of Greek and Latin. I can translate.’

‘You read Latin?’

‘Stiles, most history majors do. It’s not uncommon.’

‘Oh.’ She says. It’s pretty easy to forget that Lydia has twenty IQ points on just about everyone.

‘I’ll translate it,’ Lydia says quietly, ‘but you get why I couldn’t say anything? At school?’

‘Yeah,’ Harris is a teacher and  Stiles is herself, if Lydia had jst said that Harris was creeping on her she probably would have reacted badly, doesn’t excuse waiting _6 months_ to say something, ‘a little bit.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Lydia says honestly. ‘You’re still welcome to come shopping with me and Allison.’

‘That liar,’ Stiles says with a smirk, ‘she said movies. I think she finds my wardrobe personally offensive.’

‘Don’t you?’ Lydia says smartly, ‘the flannel and jeans look is something you’re meant to pull out after you’ve successfully manoeuvred your person of choice into indentured servitude, you know, when you’ve got them wrapped around your fingers.’

‘So you’re always in the jeans and flannel stage.’

Lydia genuinely smiles before quickly smothering it. ‘You’re not bad Stilinski.’

\--

Scott has his first major game of lacrosse and everyone is piling around the McCall family living room before the game. There’s food and drinks and her father and Melissa McCall making everyone uncomfortable with embarrassing childhood stories. Somewhere between the story of the time they glued their hands together to prevent being separated at the end of a play date and the time Scott insisted that they were siblings to the point of violently attacking people when they disagreed, Allison says, ‘So you and Scott have always been close.’

Stiles smiles and shrugs. ‘Pretty much. He threw a spider at me. It was a Kodak moment.’

‘I bet,’ Allison says with a laugh, she sobers immediately after, ‘I really like you guys, both of you.’

‘We like you too.’

‘My aunt is coming to stay with us and I can barely look at my dad. Scott’s a werewolf and you’re _you_ and I feel-’ she cuts off.

‘You can tell me.’

‘I feel so _small._ ’

‘I know how it feels.’

‘I don’t know how to fix it.’

‘Well,’ because the truth is Stiles hasn’t got a clue either, ‘I can tell you that making the entire student population of your high school fear your ability to google is not it.’

‘I’ll keep that in mind.’ She starts to say more but Melissa calls and Allison is sliding into her car to drive to the game. Stiles drives her own beat up Jeep with Scotts lacrosse gear in it. Her car is the only one with the appropriate human-to-giant-lacrosse stick ratio. She spends a few minutes parking and then a few more tugging ineffectually at the jammed in end of one of the sticks.

‘Hey.’ Scott appears beside her and throws an arm over her shoulders the other arm tugging the stick lightly out. ‘I’m sorry. I’ve been less than stellar as a friend lately.’

She makes a face at him. Scott is and always has been an excellent friend, and besides, changing species kind of gives you a few friend passes. ‘We’ve been friends for years. That’s not changing for anything.’

‘It would have sucked if you didn’t like Allison.’

‘Excuse me, if you hadn’t gotten her I definitely would have.’ A wave of nearly nauseating cologne hits her just before the boy it belongs to fills up her vision. ‘Jackson Whittemore as I live and breathe, why are you in our way.’

‘I need to talk to my _co-_ captain.’ Jackson smirks. ‘Without his sad second sack.’

What a _gift_ of a line. ‘That was impressively filthy coming from your mouth. Did you roll it around on your tongue, lather it up, suck on it? Did it make you feel like a real boy?’

‘Stiles,’ Scott grabs her hand and laces their fingers together, squeezes, ‘time to lay off, yeah?’

Jackson manages to make adjusting the lacrosse stick on his back unspeakably arrogant. ‘Don’t know why you’re laughing.’

‘Really? Does the innuendo need to be more obvious?’

Jackson shrugs a shoulder toward the field; Scott bumps her with his shoulder that means _sorry,_ she bumps him back. Jackson rolls his eyes, ‘I just figured you’d have other stuff to worry about. With that video going around and everything. I do need to talk to Scott so this will have to wait.’

What video, she thinks, but with the crowd swelling up around them it becomes rapidly unimportant. She and Allison sit close to the podium with Melissa. Both of them are chatting and cheering. There’s a podium set up on the field and a huge, too expensive to be worth it outdoor screen behind it. When she asks Allison she makes a face and says it’s a tribute to some guy from the lacrosse team ten years ago.  

Eventually Coack Finstock approaches the podium shrugs a little and says. ‘Look, I could say something but this guys has balls you need to see to believe.’

The film starts playing and Stiles tunes out until she hears the first gasp.

It doesn’t register immediately, wouldn’t register at all if Melissa didn’t reach for her and say _don’t look, honey._ Of course, she gives it her full attention after that.

She wishes she hadn’t.

That’s her, in the forest, she remembers that red dress. That’s her going deeper into the forest but she doesn’t remember that, she’d certainly remember the cut -

But she does remember it, later, in the hospital, the fogginess in her head.

They filmed it.

‘Oh, god,’ Scott says, hands curving into claws on her arm, ‘Stiles.’

‘Shut up,’ She hears herself say, ‘you need to just, this isn’t, oh my god-’

She watches it from a distant point far, far back in her head. It’s like being dunked in an ocean, brought up again to be slammed by the waves. _Slam,_ she can feel his hand on her shoulder, on her leg, on her face, _slam_ she can remember her hands in the dirt, _slam, slam,_ her head is full of buzzing and _slam_ her body against the ground. Her world view shrivels up to her hands clasping on the ground and her voice making noises she doesn’t mean.

It’s an honest nightmare

And everyone is invited to see it

‘Stiles,’ Allison’s hugging her but there is no physical connection between Stiles’ mind and her body. People are screaming to stop it, make it stop and it’s not her but it should be.

She comes back slowly; she’s expecting to be crying. She’s not. Her eyes are dry and her thumb is digging into her palm so badly there’s blood. Scott has her face turned into his shoulder and Allison is plastered along her back. Scott’s hand is pressed along the back of her neck, refusing to let her look up and away at the, god, at the people, at the _voyeurs,_ who have just seen the worst hours of her life. She’s torn between gratitude and screaming.

When she does manage to get her head off his shoulder it’s to a million eyes laying her bare, laying her on the _ground_ because they know, now, they all know, they-

She breaks from Allison and Scott and jumps onto the podium and snatches the microphone from Finstocks loose hands before they can grab her again. Things are still a little indistinct, all she’s getting is anger but if she doesn’t hold onto to that she’s going to drown in pity, so, anger it is. She opens her mouth and they’re all expecting a spectacle, a breakdown, but that won’t be it. She smiles. ‘Good morning students of Beacon Hills High! How are you? Did you have a nice night? That’d good, cause, I, uh, I haven’t. As you are all already well aware six months ago a group of men, which I didn’t know until just now, maybe students here, maybe not, went round table on me for a few hours in the forest at Jackson Whittemore’s ‘Dead of Night’ party. And thanks to the beauty of outdoor viewing now you know what it looked like, good for you, maybe you’ll believe it next time.’ The crowd looks uncomfortable, good, they should be. ‘I know I’ve wronged some of you in the last couple of months, confiscated your id’s, caught you when you cheated, and I know you think I’ve basically been ruining your lives for malicious fun. You’re wrong. I did it because I believe in the law and because someone you know asked me to. I’m nice like that. But if any of you know anything about what happened to me and you don’t let me know sometime in the next, say, 24 hours, I hope you know that when I figure this out, and I _will_ , I will bring a hell on you of which you can scarcely imagine. If you think I’m not capable of ruining _every single last one of you_ then you haven’t been paying much attention.’ She drops the microphone on the ground and steps off the podium. ‘Have a nice day.’

The crowd is quiet when she leaves, quiet when she gets into her car, quiet until they think she’s gone and everyone starts yelling. Allison crawls into her passenger seat barely a minute later. Stiles says nothing just tries to hold her anger until she’s someone who can cry about it.

‘Wow,’ Allison rests her head on Stiles shoulder. ‘Think that was loud enough.’

Stiles shrugs. ‘We’ll see.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apparently there is a fic that has the exact same name and also happens to be a Veronica Mars AU, so, uh, feel free to throw down some renaming suggestions.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so long. The second part of the playlist will be available via my [tumblr](http://slowtakedowns.tumblr.com/) sometime tomorrow.

She’s not really expecting the way the Hale’s react, which is to say badly, but badly in a way that makes her speech and ultimatum look proportional.  She wasn’t going to mention it except for bloody Scott who called and then drove her right over to the Hale house, like that even makes sense.

‘Did you see who?’ Laura snarls, claws out and wolf face going nuclear. It’s fascinating in a detached b-grade horror movie way. Derek hovers around her like the big creeper he is which is still better than Scott _clutching_ Allison like she might die if he doesn’t hang on.

 ‘I was too busy being suffering a massive panic attack,’ all the wolves snap at that and it is really something that she is the one least offended by her own violation. It’s almost charming how upset they all are.

‘We’ll kill them.’ Laura says decidedly, ‘very slowly.’

‘Thanks but I have my own plans. You wouldn’t even know if _someone,_ ’ she looks at Scott who has the indecency to glare back, ‘hadn’t tattled on me.’

‘You were hurt,’ he says, ‘and now that I understand I had-’

She cuts in quickly before he can unbury the pain for both of them. ‘I’m not mad. I just have a handle on this.’

‘You have leads.’ Derek says, fingers lightly touching her hair. She lets him tangle them up in the longer curls toward the back, a small gesture since they seem so out of sorts. Derek moves in closer in a less proprietary way than usual. She lets him because maybe he’s finally figured out that grabbing and shoving ends with everyone upset.

‘A few,’ she says, ‘I can probably get my hands on that tape.’

Laura perks up. ‘We can watch it for you.’

Stiles flinches. Derek’s fingers snag in the short curls at the back of her head and he sounds apologetic as he untangles them. ‘Thanks but, uh, I’d rather no one else see me like that.’

‘We’ll help you.’

‘Yeah. I can see that.’ She says quietly.

Derek’s fingers trail from her neck to her shoulder twice before she moves away from him properly. His body lilts after her for a second before he gets a handle on it and stops.

‘You shouldn’t do this alone.’ Derek says uncomfortably.

‘Probably not,’ she answers, rolling her shoulders. She’s too tired to lie and evade what are rapidly becoming some obvious truths. Werewolves will be a part of her life for a long while yet and while she’s really not sold on this _pack_ thing Beacon Hills is quickly becoming an expy for Twin Peaks in terms of weird coincidences and maybe town wide conspiracies. Fire power with flashy eyes and teeth might stop her from becoming Audrey Horne before her time. ‘What happened with Peter?’

Laura frowns profoundly and it’s the deep lines around her mouth that settle her and Derek as siblings, they just look so displeased. ‘You are not to work with him.’

‘No dice.’

‘Stiles. He is very dangerous.’ Laura looks pensive, ‘I need time before I can accept him as part of this pack.’

‘Why are you taking him back? He tried to kill you.’

‘We’re three wolves and maybe two humans, I need at least three and since neither you or Allison are eligible Peter is my best option.’

‘That’s rough.’ Scott says.

Stiles nods at him. ‘I’m not going to stop working with him; he’s got what I need.’

‘He’s cunning, always has been.’ Derek shuffles back behind her.

‘I’m better,’ she says easily.

 Laura rolls her shoulders and looks to everyone else in the room in turn. ‘Call me if you see him. I know you think you can handle everything but you’re still just a kid. Peter is much more dangerous than some jerk jock you can intimidate with a few sarcastic comments.’

There’s a world of condescension in that statement. You don’t watch your mother die slowly, you don’t send your still heartbroken father to work every day with no real assurance he’ll come back, you don’t _get raped,_ and stay young. ‘I’ll call.’

It’s not a lie, if she really can’t get out of something she’ll call. Laura nods and sends Derek to take her home. She doesn’t bother saying a word to him, not even when he all but escorts her to bed.  

\--

She dreams of her mother.

There are drums on the altar of a wide open table at the centre of an orchard. The trees in the grove hang heavy with fruit. Her mother is holding a knife. There is a moment of stillness and then women pour out of the forests and around the altar. They place their hands on the altar and vanish. Seemingly endless lines of them scrape fingers over it and disappear.

A noise blares through the trees and suddenly there are masked men. The men come right to the edge of the grove and watch the women entering the altar with palatable hunger. A women with the ever changing skin of a wolf stalks forward and attacks one of the masked men. In a second the masked man turns into a giant bird and attacks. There’s a clash of claws and beaks and fury. The wolf woman wins briefly, howling at her mother on the altar just once before a silver hand reaches out to silence it. The light fails. Everything is dark. Then flashes, short and bright.

The men in masks come every time the lights flash dragging one woman away into the darkness each time. Eventually it’s just her mother and the wolf woman standing by the altar. Her mother holds out shaking hands and calls down lightning that strikes the ground. The men stop and look at her. The smell of almonds crawls up inside her nose and stays there. More lightning, again and again, until the ground is set alight and the fire burns into a protective barrier around her mother and the wolf woman. One of the men smiles, too wide, too many bone white shapes, and lets out a high pitched noise, something comes out of the forest and her mothers eyes blow wide before she starts to scream. The fire stops protecting them and advances toward them, crawling across the ground in the shape of feet and talons. The fire eats everything and all Stiles can smell is bitter almonds.

\--

The Beacon has a copy of the tape on a flashdrive.

She sits with that little flashdrive cradled in her palm and wonders how something so terrible could be folded and folded until it’s less than the length of a finger. She slips it into her bra and starts looking for the Peter Hale box, and more specifically, who the box might belong to. She clears off one of the reporters table and triple checks that she’s alone before she lays it out. It’s the same type of camera and by the consistency of the shots a really good amateur. She’d been right the first time; it’s an obsession with the same dedicated thoroughness as everything else. It’s not just about Peter, though, four other names crop up and from the top of her head she knows at least three are in the creepy diary.

The fifth name is Branwen, just Branwen.

She boots up a computer and brings up the internal search engine for the Beacon and types in the mystery name. She gets two hits, one is a nonsense link leading to some page about almond trees and the second is one huge grainy slow loading picture that she leaves open in a tab, moving away to go through the desks and personal folders of the Beacon reporters. There’s three of them. Cassie Lave, Kevin Hosoff and Laney Tran. Kevin is the lead reporter, Laney is the photographer and Cassie does the editing. A year back, before everything, Stiles was the ‘guest’ photographer, the one who specialised in sports and boring academic events Laney wouldn’t go to for hard cash. She got a special title if she could shut her mouth about it. Laney liked having the credit and Stiles liked having an easy source of information so, really, it all worked out. The guest photographer isn’t listed anywhere which quickly grows irritating.

She tries matching the writing which clears all of them pretty quick. The writing on the box is tilted and exaggerated but still crisp. Laney’s is too loopy, and Cassie and Kevin have always been ruler straight printers. So mystery photographer it is.

The picture has long since finished loading by the time she reorganises the room. It takes up the whole page, It’s a cropped photo from a dance. A woman in a tight bright yellow dress and a flower in her curled hair, the arm of a boy, tall and broad in the shoulders, wrapped around her. She’s smiling a little uneasily, like there’s something going on just outside of frame that makes her uncomfortable. Stiles looks for identifying features in her face, an odd birthmark or a very specific scar. She stares into her eyes for a solid minute before she realises she’s not breathing, her body is shaking, and she’s gripping the table like she might die if she lets go. The worried eyes in the photo are the same ones that gaze back at her in the mirror.       

Her mothers.

\--

School is hallway after hallway of whispers. Everyone is whispering her name.

She doesn’t go to her locker till the end of school. Lydia has left a tiny translation sheet on obnoxiously scented stationery.  There’s a box wrapped in pale yellow silk. She rattles it and it makes no noise. Allison and Scott descend upon her in the next moment. She slides the box into her back pack and forgets about it for a few hours. Lacrosse practice is a tedious masculinity battle between Scott and Jackson with Jackson being the only one playing. They all have dinner at Stiles’ house, her father will be away for another few days. It’s nice to have a somewhat fuller table.

No one mentions werewolves or hunters or anything scary at all. Scott does pass along a message from Laura, mostly asking her to check in. There’s an undercurrent of tension to it she’s not so much ignoring so much as just not taking seriously.

She forgets all about the yellow box until she pulls it out and places it on the table next to her bed. It looks strange next to the small plush wolf. The box looks small and innocent on the blue bedspread. The box has a small latch and it takes her a moment to figure out how it works. The lid flips open and inside, nestled in matching pale yellow satin is a strip from the red dress she was wearing the night of the party and a dozen grainy pictures of herself with Allison, Laura, and Derek. Underneath the photo is a small slip of paper in the same cursive as the book.

_We can see you._

She packs up the box again and looks around her room. Nothing’s changed or been moved without her knowledge. Nothing’s new except the small plush wolf she found in her locker. Which she brought into her house without vetting. Because she’s an _idiot._ She’s facing away from it now. She could grab it and throw it away. Or she could use it. Control the information they’re getting.

She turns dramatically and looks scared and confused. Puts the yellow box deep in her wardrobe with shaking hands. Turns around her room and does a thorough search twice more before she falls on her bed. The night is still and she thinks she can hear the shutter of a camera.

\--

Somehow she manages to fall asleep. She wakes up when there’s a noise from downstairs, heavy boots on the floor. Ever since the night with the Hunters in the forest she’s had an extra taser and a very convincing fake gun stashed under her bed. There’s something to be said for paranoia. She slips on shoes and carefully goes downstairs. There’s a faint creaking from the exposure warped planks right by the doorway. The light flickers on and she swings her taser up getting ready to fire. An unimpressed huff greets her. She blinks at the intruder and puts down her weapons. ‘Oh for fucks sake, Peter.’

Peter raises one eyebrow and frowns slightly. ‘You should really be afraid of me.’

‘I have a gun, I’ll be fine.’

‘You haven’t been to see Deaton.’ He says irritated.

‘No? I have school?’

Peter rolls his eyes, school isn’t something to worry about then. ‘Never mind. I brought him to you.’

She leans against the wall. Of course he did. ‘I’m just going to assume you don’t mean ‘politely gave him a lift when he decided to come of his own volition’.’

Peter smiles and turns on his heel and leaves. The door is wide open and inviting. Shoving down the part of her that mentions what a crap idea this is, she follows him. He leads her to a man tied with a thin rope; casually standing in her front yard like it’s no big deal. Scott’s boss has got balls that drag on the ground.  

She salutes him because why not? ‘Dr Deaton.’

Deaton gives her an indulgent smile. ‘I think you can call me Alan at this point Ms Stilinski.’

‘Alan it is then.’

Peter’s lip curls. ‘What do you know?’

Alan manages to make his entire face look so unimpressed with Peter’s everything it’s magical, Stiles might be developing a crush. ‘You threw a chair at me; I’m not much inclined to answer your questions.’

Peter raises an eyebrow and keeps the same good natured smile on his face.

Stiles clears her throat. ‘Do you know anything about what’s been happening around Beacon Hills?’

Alan gives her slightly less acidic but still utterly unimpressed expression. ‘The Sheriff has already talked to me.’

‘He’s an idiot.’ She moves forward to untie him. Peter looks offended.

‘He was tied up for your safety.’ Peter hisses.

‘What do you care about that?’ She replies.

‘You’re important to Derek and Laura,’ Peter says, ‘my family has been hurt enough already.’

‘True enough. I am dangerous.’ Alan says before Stiles can reply. ‘You have your mothers’ eyes.’

‘But not a lightning shaped scar.’ She says mournfully.

 ‘That’s all I can tell you.’

‘Can?’

‘Can.’ Alan confirms. ‘Hope is, Ms Stilinski.’

Between one blink and the next he disappears.

Stiles wolf whistles. ‘This town just gets freakier every day.’

Peter picks up the rope and loops it around his own neck. ‘What does your mother have to do with this?’

She quirks an eyebrow. ‘Doesn’t it just suck to be out of the loop?’

Peter tilts head and takes one menacing step forward. ‘I could force you to tell me.’

‘Not really, no.’

‘How could that possibly be true?’ 

‘I’ve got a gun.’

‘But no wolfsbane bullets.’ Peter smiles. ‘You’re _smart_ and I am not a bad man. Not really.  Now when everything's relative.’

She tugs her wrist out of his grip and clasps both arms behind her back. ‘How do you know there’s no wolfsbane?’

‘Smell.’

Suddenly he’s in her space and she becomes acutely aware of the situation. She’s alone with a dangerous man who would kill her, fuck what he said about family, and there’s no one around to hear anything. She’s got two weapons that are next to useless long term. She’s outmatched several times over physically. Peter holds her gaze and refuses to back off until she’s so unsettled she can feel the hard edge of panic like a knife on her tongue. Slowly and deliberately, Peter uncoils from her space and walks away. Singing a sweet and merry tune as he goes.

Her hand covers her heartbeat and she holds it there until it slows down.

\--

Shopping goes well. Contrary to popular belief Stiles is perfectly capable of dressing up, she just spends most of her time with people who would not appreciate or even understand the effort. She buys one pair of ridiculously lacy and expensive underwear, dark blue with thin cream edging, and a pair of stockings to match. She’s not going to wear it anytime soon but it makes Lydia look at her like she's solved a great mystery of human kind. Allison just suggests she finds a pair of matching heels, which is another reason Allison is better than most people. Lydia buys half a store and Allison is only a few purchases behind. There’d been an incident over a purple number that would have looked tragic on both of them. Stiles had claimed it out of pity and embarrassment.

It’s normal in a way she’s never had. Lydia bums a ride off of her and she flips between an obnoxious alternative station and the one classical her reedy little radio picks up. On one of the common stretches of forest Lydia looks at her calculatingly.

‘This was fun.’ Lydia says cautiously.

Stiles smiles. ‘It kinda was wasn’t it?’

The silence is warm and comfortable and not at all stretched.

So of course that’s when Lydia is ripped through the door by taloned hands.

\--

The next eight hours are a mess.

She crashes her car, stumbles out of the wreck to find Lydia. Spends what feels like hours with a serious concussion following the blood trail Lydia has left. She’s screaming Lydia’s name and trying to stop the blood dripping from the gash on her head. Her phone is busted so she can’t call anyone and her ankle feels like it’s the size of a bowling ball. Her head feels like someone has cracked it open. Every time she breathes it feels like there’s hot breathe on her shoulder and footsteps just behind her, stepping on her heels. The trail gets thicker toward a twisted pile of tree limbs and bright pink flowers. She screams for Lydia again and the trees grow brighter. She sees something slither away into the night but ignores it in favour of gripping the tree branches and wrenching them apart. The trees cut into her hands and heal almost instantly. She ignores that too and crawls inside the nest.

Lydia is lying in a mess of blossoms and twigs, long thin claw marks bleeding down her arms. Her face is peaceful and unmoving. No matter how much Stiles shakes her she doesn’t wake up.  

That’s hour one.

Hour two is spent dragging Lydia to the nearest house shouting for help. She honestly has no idea who the family that opens the door is. She thinks the tall older boy is in her year, Vernon something; he takes Lydia off of her when she finally falls into shock properly. A girl a few years younger than herself helps her to a couch and wraps her in a blanket. There are a lot of small kids around her immediately and it is exactly the opposite of what she needs to stave off the panic attack. The guy, and it’s Boyd, actually, he says, takes her to a small room where Lydia is lying on an unmade bed. He says he’s going to call the Sheriff. Stiles replies with something scathing, maybe, it’s just too hard to think and her ankle hurts _so much._ An ambulance arrives and Boyd piles her into the ambulance before getting in himself.  The hospital is brighter than she can ever remember it being before. They take Lydia somewhere and she follows half mad with the idea that if she leaves her alone she’ll wake up to find that something horrible has happened.  She curls up on some chairs outside her room. Melissa McCall wakes her up to check her over. It’s a minor head wound and a sprained ankle. Someone hands her a prescription.

She falls asleep for hours three to seven, thank god. When she wakes up her father is there, trying to move her away from Lydia. She might scream at that, her throat rapidly dries up, and she’s yelling nonsense about almond trees and claws. Boyd carries her to Lydia’s bedside when she slaps her fathers’ hands away. She can’t leave Lydia. There’s another blanket around her shoulders and a small hand in hers. A little girl with huge liquid brown eyes and curly pigtails is clinging to her. She’s quiet and calm and Stiles gets the feeling that the child is anchoring her, keeping her calm. The Sheriff asks her questions, she answers them as shortly and as politely as possible. The Sheriff and her father exchange nauseous looks and heated words. She doesn’t bother to listen to anything that isn’t the machines whirring away around Lydia. She wants to sleep again. She wants Lydia to wake up. The Sheriff leaves and her father gathers her up in his arms and carries her away. She makes Boyd promises to look after her and looks him straight in his shocked eyes until he agrees. The little girl slips a handmade bracelet onto her wrist.

She cries a lot and her father pats her hair and makes apologies for the whole universe. The smell of bitter almonds follows her into sleep.  

\--

They give her the good medication for the rest of the week and she slips in and out of sleep. She’s not even a little surprise to wake up to the smoke and leather smell of werewolves.  

\--

Jackson comes to her on the weekend.

He’s wearing something that looks like it came out of a catalogue, leaning against his car like it’s some sort of fucking competition. After everything that’s happened he has the sheer gall to turn up on her doorstep like he _deserves_ something. She thinks about palming a bat and hitting his dumb Porsche with it. She’d shoot him but she’s seen the paperwork and it really is a bitch.

‘Stilinski, you going to invite me in?’

‘No.’  

Jackson sighs tiredly. ‘You remember right? What happened with you and me?’

‘Yeah,’ she says, ‘I do.’

Here’s the story of how Stiles Stilinski of the lowest social rung ended up at the hottest party of the year.

On the Tuesday of a boring week working front desk at the Sheriffs office Stiles ends up running down paper work for a stolen Porsche, not just any Porsche though, Jackson Whittemores brand new engraved and shiny one. Back then she’d had a somewhat ridiculous crush on his body. Not him, he was still an irredeemable sack of slime, but his body she could get behind. Or in front of. Anyway he wanted, really. In hindsight she was kind of ripe for it. Jackson swaggers in, they banter, and for one ridiculous second the air turns charged with something. No matter how much she tries Stiles can’t let go of how it felt to be the full focus of attention. He used that against her, the jackass. She ended up going to his party fully expecting a Carrie moment and instead she got her drink spiked. It’s been an uphill battle to not just blame herself for the sheer fucking stupidity of thinking Jackson gave two damns about her.  

She pointedly looks away when he tries to catch her eyes. Jackson swallows, Adams apple bobbing up and down. ‘I never meant for you to get hurt.’

Her eyes narrow. ‘Do you know something?’

Jackson looks pained. ‘Stiles. I mean in general. I never meant to hurt you.’

‘People generally don’t mean it, doesn’t stop it from happening though.’

‘My dad didn’t do it.’

She thinks about holding on to it. Keeping it to herself and hating Jackson for the rest of her life. It’s Jacksons face in the light that stops her. He’s incandescent and gorgeous as per usual but there’s darkness etched in under his eyes, dullness in the way he looks at her. She can’t not hate him, she doesn’t think she’s capable of forgiving all the way anymore, but she can bank it, remember him as the boy who couldn’t stop kissing her for 25 minutes in the back of a car. ‘I know.’

‘How?’ He asks, like his certainty is shaken by hers.

‘There’s a lot more going on here.’ She capitulates. Jackson looks like he wants to throw up. The hard line of Jackson’s back leaves with barely a look behind him.

She walks back into her house, takes off her shoes and leans against the door. She passes fifteen minutes thinking about nothing. It’s been a really horrible couple of weeks. Almost as bad as losing her mother. It’s been a really terrible week or so in a really fucking horrible year. She’s so tired emotionally, physically, and mentally all she wants to do is cry. She can’t do that either with the wolf there watching her every fucking move. She trudges up the stairs and hears the quick slide of her bedroom window and the _thump_ of heavy feet.

It’s kind of obvious who it is.

She sighs heavily and opens the door. ‘Okay Creeper, this is a line.’

Derek’s faux casually reading a book on her bed. ‘Jackson Whittemore, really?’

‘How long have you been up here?’

He shrugs and goes back to the book. She notices exactly how close he came to picking up the Diary of Creepy and thanks whatever is out there for that small mercy.

‘You’re watching me?’ She asks.

Derek shrugs, like it’s perfectly normal to be in a 16 year old girls bedroom. ‘You okay?’

‘Don’t want to talk about it.’

‘We don’t have to.’ He says too quickly. ‘At all. Ever.’

The silence stretches toward awkward. Derek goes back to reading the book and Stiles fucks around on her computer for a half hour. Her stomach rumbles and she hears what might, on another person, be laughter.

She spins in her chair. ‘How do you feel about pizza?’

‘How does any guy feel about pizza?’

‘You just admitted to being ordinary,’ she stands up and pulls together her things, ‘come on, you’re paying.’

\--

It occurs, sitting across from Derek as he mulls over Pizza toppings in the cute little 60’s style pizza place in the expensive end of town, that this is all very date like. She’s had three dates, all of which ended in calls to or from the Sheriffs department. She really can’t imagine the special horror dating Derek Hale would include. Without a terminally dangerous situation or his sister around to fix everything with hugs and orders she actually has no idea what to say to him. Derek puts down his menu and just, he just _stares_ at her. Large, unblinking eyes cataloguing  exactly how many spots she has. Romance novels told her it would be romantic. It’s not. It’s creepy.

‘So how about them Mets?’ she says, it’s frankly the best icebreaker she has by a long shot. It’s not like she can ask about his family, or work, or god forbid, hobbies.

Derek looks grateful and then begins a long, detailed monologue on how the Mets are doing and how he’s projecting they’ll do next year and possibly for all of time after that. She lets him keep talking. She thinks there might be charts. She laughs, not unkindly, when he starts talking about the bowed legs of one of the players and how that would affect his stride and Derek makes a face like anger, anxiety, and an upset possum had a horrific teething baby that got stapled to his eyebrows. It’s a truly impressive mass of pure unhappiness. 

‘I’m sorry,’ he says with no real emphasis.

‘It’s fine. I just never would have pegged you for a baseball fan.’

‘I lived in New York,’ he says like that magically explains everything.

‘But not all the time.’ He raises an eyebrow, she looks significantly at his wallet. ‘You have a lot of cash and what looks like an extra licence. And I’ve seen Hunters first hand; it wouldn’t make sense to stick together all the time.’

‘I travelled. Laura stayed. The impermanence got to her. We still have an apartment in New York.’

She takes a bite of the pizza, pointedly folded in half, Derek rolls his eyes. ‘What was that like?’

He talks for a solid 45 minutes about small towns stringing up and down the east coast. About bakeries and malls with terrible air conditioning  and fairs with angry Shetland ponies and how if anyone tells you there’s any other kind you should call them a liar and spit on their feet. He talks about the best cup of caffeinated diabetes he’s ever had and the worst truck stop burger. He talks and he talks and Stiles rapidly feels danger steeping on her heels. Derek Hale is a person; a not particularly nice person who likes baseball and terribly girly coffee. She can feel herself expand her world view a tiny bit to include him. She even lets him have the last slice of pizza.

‘So?’ He says expectantly.

She opens her mouth to tell a secret and clicks it shut again. ‘It’s all Beacon Hills, not much to talk about.’

Derek makes his extraordinarily unhappy face again before he angrily rips open his wallet and throws out some bills and change. The waitress comes over and smiles politely as he gathers his things and shoves himself into his leather jacket. Stiles apologises for his lack of manners and follows the angry footfalls back to the car. Derek flicks her one frustrated look before setting the car in motion.

She gives the door a casual kick. Derek looks like he might murder her. ‘You know we end up with you angrily driving me places a lot?’

‘Twice is not a lot.’

‘It’s more than once.’

Silence falls once again and Stiles chooses to find it hilarious rather than intimidating. He’s just so damn _unhappy_ about it. Derek turns into her driveway and grabs her shoulder before she can climb out.

‘Do you remember my Aunt Uallach?’ He says desperately and oh, no wonder he’s so upset about it. He laid himself bare and she couldn’t even be assed to come half way clean.

‘Sometimes.’ She opens the door and gets out. Leans down into the open window, makes sure to look him directly in the eyes, ‘I think you have to. Nothing deserves to be forgotten.’

Derek nods and drives away, lights fading into the background.


End file.
